Night Angel Tales

Crisp leaves edged with shades of burnt orange sailed on the dusty, chill autumn wind. One scrabbled across Tam's unshaven face and stuck there like a fast and dirty rodent. He smacked it away; bark bits and twigs bit into his ragged clothing. He reached the edge of the steep embankment and squinted against the gale's ferocious blow.

Bleak gray clouds rippled like the moving rib cage of a whale, and the horizon looked pale and nearly colorless, like a vampire had swallowed the wine of sunset. The shutters of darkness would soon close hard, with a mood of suicide - an atmosphere that spoke of the many people who broke down in the face of the emptiness of fall. This was the season of self-loathing and his self-loathing. It was a time of the year when people often went mad and played with self-destruction. Yet he wasn't here to destroy himself, and if there really was such a thing as madness, he'd been mad for years.

Polluted brownish water flowed in the wide stream below. Froth and chemical poisons spitting in the surging murk, climbing and spattering rounded boulders, sending up spray that flew as mist on the wind. He could see skulls in the muck at the bottom. Bones he’d dumped years ago. Bright sockets glaring, ghost faces of the dead stretching into rubber screams as the skin of the water reflected the faint light and rippled through transparency and dull mirror shades.

The old footbridge was gone, eroded to a stump by chemicals and washed away, and the waters were too fast and toxic to ford. He dug his moccasins in hard as he went down the bank, and at the shore he spat on the waves, then took a brand new hatchet from his pack and began to cut a small maple tree.

His blows were smooth and effective, and the gusts soon aided him, sweeping in over the bank and tossing the head of the tree forward until it snapped and crashed across the stream. Tam enjoyed the screech of the splitting wood and watched as it settled in the leaping water, waiting for a safe moment to cross. A moment that never seemed to come as the tree rocked in the waves.

He bit his tongue impatiently, then he prepared, leaped over the dripping roots, and ran across the slippery trunk. The water splashed up over his pounding feet and sloshed into his face as he made the jump for the far bank - a vile chemical taste seething past his lips as he landed. It caused him to stumble and fall. And as he lay there on his back, he spat fizz several times, trying to get the chemical and bacterial stink out of his mouth.

The flavor refused to vanish - it was foul - tastes of rotten corpses lingering with metallic slime on his gums. He took his lip between his teeth and bit, feeling better as warm blood flowed on his tongue. A moment later, he was up and climbing the bank. At the top, the wind roared through the trees like a beast and whipped his clothes as he plodded on through wilting weeds toward a path in the woods. Broken oaks surrounded him. Even the lichens on the many boulders had a moldy, cobwebby look of decay. This forest held more dead matter and petrified wood than anything else, and the sound of it groaning in the gale stirred fright.

The cold began to eat at his bones, so he was glad it wasn't a long walk. The clearing was about a quarter mile away. Poison ivy and thistles crunched underfoot as he stumbled out of the trees. And in the center of a field of thick, dead crabgrass, the crumbling walls of an abandoned factory rose. Carbide Boniphal Chemical and Nickel Company, Ltd. - the faded words could still be read on the side of a rusting trailer leaning in the weeds beside the main building.

Boniphal was the name of a special poison - the company had killed the land and the water in this area while developing it and its byproducts. It had killed both natives and whites with horrible diseases and made this place a no-man's land. Some of it had been cleaned up with public money, but this rise was simply fenced off, and Tam knew he was the only person who came here. In his mind, it was much like returning home. He'd worked at Boniphal more than two decades ago - he'd lost his mind after five years at Boniphal. He'd spent another long ten years in a secretive maximum-security lunatic asylum outside in the far north. When he got out, he returned and found that everyone had died. He'd been the lucky one - no long-term exposure or weird cancers and growths like the others.

Standing beside a deep crack in the wall, Tam studied the sumac on the far side. It rose to flames in his mind like red autumn fire. Long faces rose in the distortion of imagination, some of them laughing wickedly - then they settled, and his vision was of a paneled room and a circle of middle-aged men at a polished table - men passing judgment on him.

Voices echoed in hostile tones, and pain crinkled like electricity and crisp cellophane behind his eyes. It worked to drain him of blood and energy; his heart felt like a painful lump swelling in his breast. He knew it was trauma of some form, but it appeared as pain.

“You murdered that woman!” Doctor Wesley exclaimed through piggish jowls. His face was dirty and shadowed, and one that could never quite be shaven clean. “Fixation! There isn't a devil, or Satan, or Lucifer. Your Night Angel is a dream and only a dream. He is the manifest effect of the Boniphal poison in your brain cells. Genetic damage is working to destroy you. Surely you understand. Our medication and therapy show that to you now. Don't they?”

He seemed to be looking down, seeing himself at the table, chaos whirling in his mind as the form of the Night Angel rose like a hidden tornado. Satan had possessed the woman. He'd known that when he'd killed and dismembered her. And Doctor Wesley's medication was more poison, not a cure. The Night Angel wanted him to lie - so Tam's drawn face softened with remorse, and his crooked right eye shed a tear. Drugged peace eased his wide mouth, and his thin lips trembled delicately. The look of the wild faded from his eyes - he seemed as gentle as a lamb. Gentle because the angel wanted it that way. He heard himself saying, “Yes, I understand it now. My thoughts have cleared. They've been slowly clearing over time. What I did was despicable, but you must understand one thing, Doctor Wesley. It was a toxin-induced fixation - the Boniphal poison damaging my brain. It caused me to behave in a cruel and unnatural manner toward that woman. But I’m not guilty of planning the murder - it was the disorder. I was incapable of planning anything. It was like a dream, a dark dream and though it was real, it seemed like I was doing the right thing. I thought she was Satan-possessed. The hallucination was very real at the time. I heard the voice of the Night Angel - it taunted me, tricked me, and drove me to do evil things. But the angel is gone now. The new medication melts him away like a bad dream. The medication and your help are lifesavers.”

Some of the other doctors had probing personal questions and questions of a perverse sexual nature. They wanted more details on his relationship with his mother and on his boyhood homosexuality, of which he was deeply ashamed. His mother had called him by his birth name, Thomas, which he hated. He didn't like the doctors reminding him of it. He was Tam now. The child named Thomas no longer existed. They wanted him to confirm that he didn't kill small animals as a boy, another memory he didn’t want dredged back up.

In the end, he heard Doctor Wesley addressing them with authority. As Tam looked at the others, he felt they might as well be under the control of the Night Angel because Doctor Wesley was another controlling Night Angel who poisoned everyone around him with his biased views on psychology.

“Gentlemen, it is possible that he may have some recurrence of the hallucinations and temporary states of fixation. But he won't be dangerous. The tests show that a tendency toward fixation torments him at times, but the new medication removes all tendencies toward violence. He won't function perfectly in society, but well enough to get by. I think we can report this as a success and Novactis’ new medication as a cure for the violent symptoms of this form of poison-induced mental disorder.”

The others nodded, two of them grunted with satisfaction, and then their faces rotted off and became fire and smoke - wisps of rancid poison drifting across time. Many years had passed, and the angel had called him here again. Tam didn’t know why, but he was certain the angel's wishes would not be something the doctors would approve.

Brightly painted lanterns formed an astral circle of light, and granite boulders formed a second circle of earth. He'd built a huge bonfire with select logs of deformed wood, and now the flames roared in the wind. Tam saw the yellow moon rising over the fanglike jags of the building's shattered roof. It was a scene of heathen worship amid desolation - most wildlife and birds had abandoned this place, and for a moment he felt like the last dying predator at the center of something black and diseased. He whispered a name, then his lips formed an O, and he began circling the fire, chanting the strange words the poison sent to his mind.

Ghostly forms began to drift in darkness and smoke - tenuous and fading - nothing more than memories rising from the bones of the thousands of dead creatures buried here in sludge. Drifting into the wind, they coagulated and rose next to a halo of light in the crystalline portion of the sky by the moon. Turbulence above howled like a cold demon, icy sweat beaded on his forehead, and as the words grew complex, the Night Angel took shape. The angel's powerful head bore a hood like the Grim Reaper, and its vast wings glistened like sharpened ebony and steel in the moonlight.

The angel looked down on him with dagger-eyes of glowing red and commanded him to stop the chant. And when it spoke, its words cut his flesh and seemed to splinter his bones with piercing shards of sound - the command for obedience contained in its fiery breath, promising that he would face judgment-day punishment should he even think of questioning this being's desires. The angel had authority, the power of an unknown hell that the wicked, who poisoned the Earth, had brought back to life.

“You are soft flesh and corruption, a student of weak human doctors,” the Night Angel said, its voice booming in his mind. “It disturbs me that you are doing nothing to aid me in the war against my rival, Satan. Listen carefully - you will begin again. Though you killed Satan in his incarnation as a woman, he is returning. Halloween is the date. Go and find the woman whose child is to be born on Halloween. I will guide you to her. Stalk her, study her - because on Halloween eve, the child will be born, and it will be the Satan seed. Before that time, you must find her, wherever she is, and destroy the child. It must not see the light of the sunrise, or it will be too powerful to stop. Kill it in the womb to be sure.”

“It will be done,” Tam said. "I will prove myself to you, and I will save the world from Satan again."

He staggered as the voice thundered. “It must be done or you will die!”

Darkness whirled and deepened, becoming a liquid coil in the sky. Tam saw the angel melt to stars and skulls and vanish. Clouds raced over the moon, covering it completely, and the wind rushed so hard it nearly snuffed the fire, and the lanterns in front of him were thrown down. The sounds of destruction filled his ears as logs burst into sparks, exploded, and flew. Moments later he was thrown to his knees. He stared like a blind man into absolute darkness, feeling the sweat harden like ice on his neck and back.

“The child will die,” he whispered through freezing drool. A maniacal determination twisted his features, and the foul smoke he'd inhaled flowed from his nostrils.

Rosemary

Autumn shades and sunlight tinted Doctor Gene Wilson's window. He studied Rosemary with knowing eyes, admiring the glow of health she radiated. Her dark hair and skin shone - a beautiful luster that reached perfection when reflected in her large brown eyes. Up close, she had a fragrance as lovely as fine perfume even when she wore none.

The Doctor put on his practiced pleasant smile. “Your pregnancy is as normal and stable. I've never seen better. Unexpected complications are always a possibility, but you seem to be a very happy mother, so they are unlikely. My guess is it'll be a by-the-book delivery near the beginning of November, and that isn't far off, so relax and deal with the pains and cravings till then.”

Rosemary nodded and forced a pleasant smile of her own as she stepped out through the office door. Her bulk and the discomfort slowed her as she walked. “I feel like a damn clucking hen,” she thought, and then she grimaced as she noticed ragged balls of dust gathered on the corner tiles by the door. If she had her baby girl in a hospital, it could at least be spotlessly clean. Wetheron Hospital was starting to look untidy, and it was more than the recent funding cutbacks. It was a type of demoralization where the staff was starting to decay. It was like they were becoming old and worn like the aging hospital itself. She'd noticed an unshaven doctor on arrival and a few orderlies who looked pale and hungover. The disinfectant from the mop water they used was starting to smell like stale liquor.

At least Doctor Wilson looked professional; it provided some minimal relief but it takes more than appearances to comfort a patient who took a closer look. Many other things were eating at her. Daily worries and the hospital actually helped to keep them below the surface and less wounding.

Number one on the worry list was Jason. As a husband, he'd succeeded in transforming from a great lover and companion into an angry man. Over the last few weeks, he'd come apart at the seams like he'd been made of little more than stuffing. He’d been a temperamental prick all morning. Stretched any further, his pettiness would become wife abuse. If he kept his pinched and angry, he'd soon be old and ugly.

“Thank you,” she said to a stocky Greek man holding the exit door for her. “Absent-minded, I'm not seeing anything but my troubles,” she thought.

A chill wind tore at her dress as she stepped outside, and she couldn't see the car parked anywhere on the semicircular exit road. Patiently, she went down the line, car by car, but Jason wasn't there. “He's taken off again. Damn him,” she muttered.

A taxi driver opened his door, but she turned him down and headed for a small parkette by the public sidewalk. Sitting there on a bench amid the scraggly trees and blowing leaves, she waited for Jason to return.

The sky was gray and patterned like fine feathers, the light filtering through a bit on the bleak side. It seemed like only yesterday, life was very simple, and happiness prearranged. She'd married the right man, and they were doing quite well at a time when others were in serious financial straits. A beautiful child was to be born … a bundle of joy that would brighten gray skies with a smile and firm up the pattern of their planned, orderly future.

But that was yesterday, and this was today. A lifetime had passed seemingly overnight. She was growing certain that she'd married the wrong man, and divorce was something she feared a hell of a lot. The poverty that would likely devour her if she became a single mother was not something she wanted to think about. It was like thinking about being raped and perhaps worse because endless humiliation could come with destitution.

Life, happiness, the meaning of it all - simplicity had been shattered, and the world now swept over her like a great power she’d never fathom. She began to feel there should be joy in just being a loving human being. That was what a baby was about - celebrating just being born. But when she looked out at everyone she knew, it was obvious that happiness was a house they built, and it quickly exited their lives when they didn't have all of the materials. With Jason, the house was burning down - and this was the first time Rosemary understood that she hadn't really been happy; she'd built an illusion around herself. So the question was whether to try to save it or just escape the flames before it came tumbling down.

Smog rose from motorists tearing by to beat the lights. Acrid fumes licked at her nostrils like reverse smelling salts, dizzying her. She had a picture of Jason racing in his car to some unnecessary business rendezvous - she could see a touch of sweat on his lightly browned skin, then his mouth warped and his eyes fired up like an imp's. Rosemary twitched on the bench and shook her head. “Visions like this will never do,” she thought as she moved her fingertips gently across her eyes.

The wind gusting in the treetops seemed unduly loud, like tearing parchment, and she looked up, seeing people passing the flower shop and others boarding the streetcar. Their fall clothes seemed dowdy and ragged; people were getting to be scarecrows, just carrying on in a dull march … their lives no more than a survival routine. Few could rise above it all and live for higher principles. It made her think of evil, and it wasn’t a roaring lion but something that sapped the strength out of the world and made life lesser and plain.

Traffic thinned, and pedestrians had vanished for the moment. Rosemary looked south, up the empty street, hoping to see Jason driving back. But there wasn't any traffic, and her eyes fell on the old Waters Funeral Home just across from the hospital. Some cars were parked in the lot, including a hearse. A lone man stood smoking in the shadows near the exit. He stared straight at her, and then he looked away toward the patchwork rooftops of nearby houses. A cloud of smoke passed from his pale lips. She noticed that he was unshaven and his suit was ill-fitting, as if it belonged to someone else. Darkness ringed his eyes, making her think of him as a drug addict or someone terminally ill. A creepy feeling came over her - maybe he'd stolen the suit from a corpse. He looked that vile.

Then his eyes settled on her again, and they held piercing fire and life that the rest of him didn’t have. She could see him well enough to note that he wasn't staring at her face; he was staring directly at her swollen belly - at her baby girl. Hate shone like stars in those eyes, and his right eye was a crooked, evil eye. It startled her so much that she got up and hurried over to the taxi line and got in a cab.

Rosemary shuddered as she adjusted herself in the seat, then, as the cab pulled out, she saw the man shuffling off past the flower shop. From the rear, he looked quite normal. But his look hadn't been normal, of that she was sure.

Like many taxi drivers, this kind fellow managed to go straight from light traffic into a jam. They ended up stopped dead beside a self-serve beer store barely two blocks from the hospital. The driver issued lifeless words of apology, then crept ahead slowly, just behind a streetcar. Irritated, Rosemary studied the street and the many tiny clothing shops hugging the sidewalk. She wished she could afford a shop of her own. She had plans to start a home business based on her computer, special designs, and online sales. But that would be after the baby was born.

At the intersection, they stopped in front of a sleazy bar and crumbling condo place called the Parkview Suites, which only made her more uncomfortable as she took no joy in studying its cheap facade. When the taxi lurched ahead, it was only for a short jump that ended with a rocking halt. It left Rosemary staring down the bar’s alleyway at torn asphalt, blowing litter, and leaves. She saw a man and a woman standing near a huge metal trash bin. They were engaged in an animated discussion. As always, she studied the woman first, registering her as a frizz-headed blond hooker in a short dress and a jacket far too thin for the weather. Then her eyes went to the man, and her expression shifted to shock and disbelief. It was Jason. His face was grim, the serious look he had worn lately as he issued his selfish commands. He said something brief, then Rosemary saw the woman get to her knees in a squat.

Covering her eyes, Rosemary began to cry quietly as the taxi lurched forward and sped through the light. The ugly image of Jason swam in phosphorescent darkness, and flashes of the strange man lurking near the funeral home came and went. She couldn't escape the conclusion that both men hated her and both belonged with stinking rats in the sewer.

Rosemary's house stood in a hideaway location on a street dead-ended by a railway grade and a hydro storage yard. It was a new house, but an odd design, sitting atop a tiny rise. Its atmosphere was best described as a spooky home-of-the-local-ghost feeling. They'd purchased it because of its low price, and at the time they'd hoped to save for a house in a better neighborhood. Her pregnancy hadn't been planned, and over time, she’d grown fond of the place and didn't bring up the subject of moving. She hadn't been thinking of it at all until now.

The boughs of huge old maple trees arched over the driveway, throwing heavy shade on the taxi as it crawled up the rise. Light, the texture of salt, filtered through, creating a shifting pattern on the polished hood. A gable and a piece of the western sky appeared, and as the car pulled in by the walk, she had the bizarre feeling that she really was a sort of ghost, with a blockhead for a husband and a comic creature kicking in her womb. The world was drifting on a timeline to the unreal.

The pie-faced French taxi driver remained about as cold and unconcerned as the weather. He wasn't your usual happy French man. She paid him with Jason's credit card, tossing him a nasty glance as she got out. He had the nerve to squeal the tires as he backed down the drive. Frowning, she watched him swing out on the road and race off. She felt like calling in a complaint, but decided against it. It wasn't worth the bother.

Cold waves from the icy asphalt seeped through her thin shoes. The bones in her feet had been aching since the beginning of her pregnancy, and they ached even more as she started up the walk. To ease the pain, she stepped into the leaves and long grass, getting a soothing feeling from the soft turf. She didn't go straight in but strolled around the grounds.

The sky had grown dull and dark, and mountainous clouds had moved in to cover everything like a lead seal. The place resembled a gloomy prison yard, the house squatting in the dim light like a jail block. Stepping up to the plank fence, she peered through a crack and studied the weedy hydro yard. It looked old, more like a junkyard than a storage area. And it was broken down, decaying like her life. She felt like everything had passed with summer, and now she'd entered a netherworld where she’d spend an eternity raising a child with a husband who had about as much love as a drooling zombie.

His shining armor had rusted quickly, but what could she do about it? Once your knight has run off with tavern wenches, of what use is he?

She felt guilty because it had been her decision not to have sex during the later months of pregnancy. Other women did, but she felt it was gross, and though he argued about nearly everything else, Jason hadn't disagreed. Even so, he would still likely bring it up if she confronted him with his infidelity. He wouldn't miss any point in defending himself.

She turned east, facing the subdivision, and saw a mild glare from the sunset reflected on the windows. She shielded her eyes, and as the spots faded, she saw something flapping in the wind. It looked like a large, ragged piece of fur attached to a pole hammered into the ground near the boundary line. She knew Jason was the only person ever down in that fenced-off area and wondered why he'd put such a thing there.

Deep leaves reached up to her shins as she took careful steps down the rise. Odors of fresh earth, roots, and a chemical fragrance filled her nostrils. As she got closer, she saw that it was a section of fur.

Thistles bit at her ankles, but she kept pushing ahead. A huge maple tree shaded her as she reached the spot, and the wind seemed to die down for some moments. The fur hung at about chest height on a wooden pole that’d been lightly carved. It appeared to be a tiny totem pole, but she wasn't sure what it was. The images on it were vaguely defined and almost formed faces, wings, or skulls. It was like the work of an artist whose mind wasn't clear.

Reaching out, she touched the fur, then quickly pulled her hand back. It was wet, and sticky blood smeared on her knuckles. She recoiled in horror as she realized that this animal had been recently killed and skinned. Her eyes went to the grass, and she saw more blood. It trailed through the weeds to a corpse. About the size of a dog, it was blackened by smoke and lay in seared grass. She couldn't tell exactly what kind of animal it’d been. Not enough of it was left.

“God,” she whispered, and the world went from cold and distant to close and hungry. Someone had sacrificed this animal in the yard, and she strongly suspected Jason. He'd been out in the yard before they left. At times, he liked to talk about a cult he'd been involved in years ago - a group that was into a lot of animal sacrifice. She hadn't known him then. Perhaps now that he was losing it, he was regressing to his old ways. The thought sickened her, and she felt suddenly paranoid, feeling an evil force and hidden eyes watching her. She choked, and then she panicked, beginning to run up the hill. She didn't get far before her head began to whirl, and she tumbled in the grass.

Next thing she knew, she was in the house and in a groggy state. The memory of picking herself up and walking the rest of the way was vague. Except for a few abrasions, she was okay. She sat in the kitchen with a first aid kit, washing the scrapes with alcohol. Feeling suddenly thirsty, she went to the fridge and poured herself a small glass of tomato juice. After one sip, she remembered the blood, and her stomach churned as she put the glass aside.

Heading up to the bedroom, she discarded her grass-stained clothes and put on a clean dress. The change helped her relax, and back in the living room, she sat staring at the TV, undecided about what she would do, if anything.

The phone rang - she picked it up and said hello. But the person didn't answer. She could hear him breathing. “Jason, is that you?” she said. Then she heard a click.

“That son of a bitch,” she muttered. “I'm tired of his weird behavior.”

She needed help and decided to call a friend. She picked Karren, her only friend who wasn't married and was close to Jason. She also could be trusted not to tell Jason anything.

Karren answered after two rings - her light voice sounding almost gleeful. After some small talk, Rosemary mentioned her problems with Jason.

Karren sighed with disbelief, and Rosemary could practically see her shaking her head with disgust at the other end. “The man has lost his marbles,” she said. “You should get out of there before he's up in a tree house with the squirrels and wants you and the baby with him. You've got his credit card, so use it to draw out some cash. Get a cab right away and come over. I work nights now, so it'll be easy for you to stay. We'll call a shrink or something tomorrow and get advice on what to do about him.”

Rosemary felt reinforced by Karren's support and decided to leave quickly. Another way of getting cash occurred to her. Jason trusted her to do his online banking, so she went into his study and booted up his computer. In minutes, she’d transferred 10,000 dollars to her own chequing account. Jason had about 30,000 left in his account. He'd been socking it away for a new house. Since he was too lazy to do the banking, she doubted he’d notice the change any time soon.

She packed her bags in a hurry, then sat down and picked up the phone. It usually took twenty minutes to get a cab, and that might be too long. Putting down the receiver, she wrote a quick note, then went out the back door and crossed the yard to a gap in the fence. Stopping there, she looked back at the house with tears in her eyes. It had taken more than a year to decorate it, and now Jason had lost his marbles and spoiled everything.

The path went through the hydro yard and a ravine and ended at the local mall. Jason used it all the time, jogging down it to the store and back. So much brush had overgrown it that it was hard to traverse. And there were hazards - broken glass, boards with nails, pieces of metal, and other junk. Her progress was slow, and as she moved along in the semidarkness, she thought of Jason. He'd always hated animals. He wouldn't even let her keep a cat. And now she was glad she didn't have one because it could end up sacrificed to his cult totem.

As the perimeter of the hydro yard vanished, the path began to descend into the ravine. It wasn't a steep drop, but it was dark at the bottom. The path had been cleared and lined with wood chips in this part, making it soft and easy to traverse. She'd gone about 100 meters down it when she spotted a portion of a dilapidated structure showing through a gap in the bushes. Halting, she stepped through for a better look. Some tramps were living here in a hovel. She could see a sweater hanging from a stripped branch. A closer look, and she saw the logo and lettering on it - Temagami Hiking Trails. She'd bought that sweater for Jason at a tourist shop two years ago, and the sight of it terrified her. He could’ve given it away to someone less fortunate. But considering his selfish nature, he probably hadn't. If he was spending time down here in a hovel, he had to be mad.

Getting back on the path, she looked up at the darkness, and it seemed to spin like poisonous smoke in her head. Clamping her hands to her bags and clenching her teeth, she began to run, thinking she wanted out of this place. Her house and its surroundings reared up as something repulsive. She never wanted to return, but to leave it behind.

Evil Returns

Darkness swept into his eyes like thick bursts of painless soot. Tam jogged across the hydro yard and swung himself over the high plank fence. Rosemary's house had all but disappeared in twilight, and he figured they had to be out because he knew they didn't retire early. It would require a closer look.

He felt through his pack for his flashlight, then began moving quietly through the deep leaves and grass. His totem suddenly appeared in front of him; he moved the light down to its base, comforted by the carvings he'd created. The animal sacrifices were a necessary evil as they absorbed evil spirits on the grounds and allowed him to do his work. In the dark, it all seemed inadequate. He felt evil spirits watching him, turned and looked to his rear, seeing nothing.

It would be best to check the house. He headed up the rise, pausing at the halfway point to study a depression in the leaves and grass … someone had been out in the yard recently, even though no one seemed to be in the house. It bothered him.

At the living room window, he saw nothing but darkness. He walked to the door, rang the bell, knocked loudly, then ducked through the lilac bushes to the side and waited. Five minutes passed, and no lights came on, so he went to the back. Taking a small pry bar from his pack, he forced the aluminum door and shouldered the inner door open. Stepping onto the back porch, he turned on the light. He went through the kitchen door, spotted the phone, and went over and checked it for messages. He found one message on it. It was Jason, saying he'd been called away on business and would be home late. His tone was apologetic and phony, but he was a careful liar.

So where was Rosemary? He scratched his head. She never went out at night, so she should be here. Perhaps medical problems and distress over her pathetic husband had forced her to the hospital, or maybe that taxi she'd taken had gotten into an accident. It was also possible that she'd fallen or something and was unconscious and in the house somewhere.

Tam squeezed his eyes shut; the Night Angel's wing flashed across his spotty vision like a scythe. It staggered him. Something wasn't right, and he knew it. Evil spirits seemed to be blocking his thinking processes. He concluded it would be best to conduct a thorough search of the house.

Detective skills and logical thinking were not his key assets. He searched the upstairs rooms first, thinking he would find her collapsed somewhere. A half-hour went by before he found the note. And he read it once, then reread it slowly. Spurs of vengeful fire flew in his mind, raising his mood to fury. He bit his tongue and stamped his feet. That wicked and whoring husband of hers had got in the way of his entire plan, and now he didn't know where she was hiding. If she didn't return, the days he'd spent working in the hydro yard would be a waste. Everything was set up - chemicals, blasting caps, the death scene - and on Halloween, he was to do what he had to do and then burn the house down. Satan would be defeated.

He had to get her back, but he couldn't think of a way to find her. Stumbling upstairs, he collapsed and rested on the bed, rubbing his temples and watching waves of shadows pass on the ceiling. Fear of the Night Angel tormented him; he didn't dare try communing with it until he solved this problem. Fear of the angel's wrath raised goosebumps on his skin.

It came to him that Jason was the key. Jason had screwed things up for him, and Jason had a background of evil and witchcraft, so obviously, he'd done it on purpose or through his channeling of some demon. As the father of the Satan child, he was doing his best to save it. Perhaps Jason had discovered the truth and knew of the plan. Satan could've spoken directly to him.

The Night Angel would know just how to punish him, but first Tam would capture him and prepare him for the Angel's wrath. Delivering him to the angel would be the answer. He bit his lip as a new feeling of satisfaction grew, then he heard a car pulling in the driveway. He checked the clock and saw it was nearly midnight. He popped off the bed, adjusted his pack and took out the pry bar. He waited a few moments, then he hurried down the stairs and waited behind the door for Jason.

Tam heard the key in the lock. The door began to open. He swung the bar, smashing it right through the glass. It caught Jason on the forehead, stunning him. And as he fell against the frame, Tam seized his arm and yanked him inside. He stumbled across the floor and caught hold of the banister. Before Jason could turn and put up a fight, Tam delivered a hard blow to his shoulder. Jason went to his knees and groaned, and then he threw himself sideways to the floor.

Scrambling up, he faced Tam, his eyes blinking as blood poured down from a deep cut above his brow. Moonlight shining in through the glass glistened on Jason's battered face as he began to charge. And Tam stepped back, grim determination and fury filling his mind. He had a vague mental picture of his bar swinging out like lightning. Then time passed, and he had a rope around Jason's chest and shoulders and was dragging him through the leaves. His anger had settled, vanishing into a black void where words and thoughts melted to silence. The peace of the Night Angel filled him.

Rosemary felt dizzying fear and confusion wind down to an uneasy mood as she reached the Sanders Mall parking lot. She stumbled at the end of the path and began to hyperventilate. Her lips went cold as she hurried through a tiny playground. And in her mind, fears of her child playing there as the fatherless child of a divorced mother haunted her. But what else could she do? A husband had to be a husband, not a piece of trash.

A quick step from the curb and she was on the asphalt lot and moving toward the sidewalk on unsteady legs. Then the jolt of a misstep caused her to stop and scan the mall.

A scene unfolded, and she became keenly aware of the crowd. There were dozens of people streaming through the row of glass doors. They shouted to one another, tossed shopping bags, slammed trunks and car doors, and generally treated October's Halloween end as another hurried event in life. Another door to rush through on the way to old age.

Leaves tumbled on the cold ground, the windy atmosphere adding urgency to their efforts. Rush job, race car to the grave ... she wondered what they were running from or to. They had no time for love or anything more than a quick embrace, and no capacity for quality in their conversations or ideas. Rosemary felt that a lot of things exist in books, and if they didn't, they wouldn't exist at all. Life had become shallow. The pocketful of genuine dreams had vanished; the soul was declining into materialism and a packet of daily worries and fears. Jack-o-lantern gods looked down on all of this and laughed mightily, and it struck her that humans did not appear to be made in God's image. The pumpkin gods had more feelings than humans; they had smiles and patience, but in a warped way.

Either laugh or you'll cry, her mother used to say. But being pregnant and married to Jason was a situation that made both those options difficult. He turned her stiff and cold; she could cry for herself, perhaps, but not for him. And she noticed that many people in the crowd were in the same boat as Jason. Their faces showed no emotion. They walked through the doors like zombies, no longer alert enough to remember what had died inside. Perhaps that being, made in the image of God, had fallen and now suffered amnesia.

“Perhaps I had it easy for too long,” she thought as she entered the doors. “I let Jason take over and make the decisions, and when things soured, there was no escape. He had me in a corner behind jail bars, and for a long time I didn't know it.”

Times weren’t the best; some shops were boarded up. Most open stores featured Halloween displays. She stopped at a bookstore and studied lit pumpkins in straw and a wooden sign that said Read a Scary Story. A garish serial killer showed on a glossy cover, and his face reminded her of the frightening man she'd seen staring from the funeral home parking lot. It spooked her, and when she turned, trails of paranoia rose in her mind. A lot of men seemed to be watching, especially one fat man over by the food court. Rather than loiter any longer, she headed for the subway, feeling some of the fear vanish as she rode an escalator down to train level.

She had a ticket, so she went straight in and down the aisle to a red bench where she dropped her bag, sat, and began to exercise her stiff fingers. A large, lifeless crowd was on the other side, waiting to travel in the other direction, and they all seemed to be staring - bug-eyed monsters, cold fish out of water. She felt uncomfortable, her legs sore, and her muscles aching, and she was sure that with the loose clothes she'd thrown on, she looked like a huge, overweight rag doll. Overnight, she'd become Pregnant Raggedy Ann - the husbandless welfare mom that society now loved to hate.

A train rushed in on the other side, and a feeling that Karren would understand came with it. She closed her eyes, heard the electric jolt and screech of the train leaving, and in her exhausted state, her memories seemed almost like visions. It was high school again, and she fought with Karren over Tom; then they made up and became fast friends during the two weeks when neither of them had a date. That was followed by James and then Karren's pregnancy - it ended in an abortion. James took off to BC while Rosemary remained with her friend, giving her encouragement at a time when suicide was her foremost thought.

Karren's messy marriage and divorce were another dark period; Rosemary knew few details of it. She did know that Karren had been through it all. Karren would understand when she arrived at her door. And that made all the difference. She boarded the train and closed her eyes in semi-rest as it accelerated, looped, and raced to the other side of the city.

Nebulous thoughts lurked at the edge of troubling sleep. Something terrible and unresolved crept in a fog of inner confusion like some monster of madness; it threatened to crush the fence of sanity and plunge her into chaos. It was about to sweep her into dark dreams, then the rumbling of the wheels turned to a squeal, and she was jolted to consciousness.

The doors seemed to open lightning fast, and as she struggled with her bag, she feared she wouldn't make it. An elderly black man saw her plight and seized the doors, allowing her to get out without breaking an ankle from the hurry.

She emerged in the night a block from Karren's house. There weren't any cabs at this lonely suburban station. From the rise, she looked down at a sea of houses – some with black windows, others winking with lights. It gave her that old feeling of suburban loneliness. There were a million people here, and that meant very little when she couldn't touch any of them. She felt locked out and locked away. The lights became jack-o'-lanterns in her mind, and a tear rolled down her cheek from the mockery of it.

The walk downhill was easy; she passed a couple of teens with streaked hair and encountered no one else on the next block. Nearly all of the lights were on in Karren's house, and her car was parked in the driveway. The tall birch and the neat yard seemed friendly in the dark - a feeling largely different from Rosemary’s own downtown house. It made her wonder how many people were afraid to approach her front door.

She felt a touch apprehensive as she rang the bell, but that vanished as Karren answered almost immediately. Her smile was dimpled and huge, as always, but something had changed in her look. Rosemary put it down to less makeup. Karren looked a lot better as an older and mellower suburban woman. As a teen, she'd been flashy to the edge of sleazy.

Karren's smile turned to a sad frown as they embraced, but as they separated, she ruffled Rosemary’s hair and said, “We should really feel sorry for Jason. You look just fine - pregnant but rosy as Rosy.”

“I am fine,” Rosemary said, stepping in slowly. “Few women have the physical strength I do at this stage of the game. Must be the big bones.”

Karren took her bag and coat and led her down the hall, saying, “You need to sit and relax anyway. I've made some lemon tea, so wait a moment and I'll fill you in on the situation here.”

Rosemary did just that, sitting on a deep, soft chair. She found Karren's living room to be homey and nearly spotless. It lacked the musty odors of her own and felt less homey, though friendlier. A large screen TV flickered as an action movie played, but the sound was muted. Furnishings were solid, with few knick-knacks. It was a man's living room, though Rosemary knew Karren had done it that way on purpose. Karren had always been focused on her personal appearance and absorbed in fashion, makeup, health, and figure. Perhaps there was some vanity in keeping exterior surroundings plain, so as not to be overshadowed by them.

Karren was also quite beautiful. She wore her dark hair up with a couple of long tresses hanging down at her shoulders. Her eyebrows were naturally arched and high, and her brown eyes were set with a slight Oriental slope -- a fierce effect that became sensual when combined with her small nose and heart-shaped lips. Her skin was dark like Rosemary's, and in her teen years, many people mistook them for sisters. Together, they looked exotic to an extent that some people mistook their race. Once, while parked at a hamburger joint on a trip to New York, some fascinated local males approached and asked if they'd come up from East Harlem. Rosemary was, in fact, Greek in ancestry, and Karren was Scottish/Italian - so there was nothing black about them at all other than their tanned skin.

“You hungry?” Karren said as she entered with the tea.

“Not at all.”

“You're really just about due, aren't you?”

“Any time, any moment.”

“I'd better fill you in on the situation. I won the house in the divorce settlement. The basement is rented out to a guy named Dave Windsor. He's handsome, and he's gay, and he pays his rent. I'm working nights, so I'll introduce you to him, and he can take you to the hospital if it becomes necessary. I have lots of space, so you can stay as long as you want. Maybe we should discuss Jason and what the odds are on you two getting back together.”

“None at the moment,” Rosemary said. “And I don't have time to weep about it. I have to think about the baby.”

“Good girl, that's the attitude to take. What's this about Jason going crackers?”

“It started a while ago. I don't know what came over him. His behavior is nasty and erratic, like someone on drugs, though I know he isn't on any. I've never found any drugs.”

“Don't count on it, dear. I thought Johnny was clean, and he was caught using needles.”

“No needles here. Jason is all business. He was growing colder and colder by the day. When I got pregnant, he changed for the better. He started treating me wonderfully, like the most caring husband in the world. Then he started getting meaner and nastier every day. It's like he hates me or something. He left me at the hospital and ran off with...” She burst into tears.

Karren's deep-set eyes became intense. “Don't hurt yourself by repeating it. Johnny did the same sort of thing to me. I stabbed him for it, but it didn't pay off. He won custody of Joey. I rarely get to see him, and he's been poisoned against me. He's been taught that I'm a criminal and insane. I don't want you to make the same mistake. What we're going to do is play by the rules. I'm working tonight, but tomorrow we're going to see a shrink I know. We'll build a case against Jason. If he can be helped, we'll help him. If he can't be helped, we'll make sure he's kept away from the baby. And don't go soft on me. It has to be done - it's a cruel world. If you don't take care of yourself, you'll see your baby taken away by that lunatic.”

“I’ll take care of myself,” Rosemary said, suddenly growing determined.

Karren left for her midnight shift medical job at the St. Michael's Burn Unit in downtown Toronto. Rosemary stood at the window, feeling suddenly lonely as she watched the polished car slip away like mercury under the street lamps. Though exhausted, she didn't feel like sleeping, so she went back to the living room and sipped tea in front of the set.

In the dim lamplight, the big screen flickered hypnotically and worked magic, temporarily erasing her worries. She slowly flicked through the pay channels, avoiding drama. A river of shadows rushed on the walls from the many action movies she encountered. In show after show, brutal death appeared as exciting and colorful scenes. A racing motorcycle screamed over a cliff. Human devils leaped through choreographed scenes as they engaged in mortal combat. Spaceships moved through fantastic maneuvers, pulsed laser light, and exploded. A new action hero fired off twenty times his body weight in lead without reloading once. A rampaging monster ate human beings like they were popcorn. A hijacker shot a man in the throat, and as the ketchup pack burst out in slow motion, she shook her head and turned off the set.

The darkened screen left her in a suddenly dim room; she saw movement near the window and gasped. Then she realized it was fog rolling outside and sighed. She walked to the curtains and looked out; mist as dense as angel hair caught the light as it rolled over the road and whited out the yard. A sudden image of Jason out there, lost in the fog, came into her mind, causing her to wince as she forced it away.

She decided it was time to hit the sack, turned, and headed up the stairs. Karren had given her a bedroom facing the backyard. It was spacious, with a bed that looked adequate if not fully comfortable. The room felt hot, so she opened the aluminum window a bit, then paused to study herself in the mirror. Her long, loose dress failed to hide her pregnancy. Her eyes seemed expanded, wet and glossy, and she felt momentarily spooked by her own gaze. She'd read that the latest studies on pregnancy showed that women underwent brain changes during pregnancy; changes that were an actual increase in intelligence. Perhaps something like that was happening to her, and she could see it as something weird reflected in her eyes.

Natural Healing

Pulling herself under the covers, she immediately dozed off and fell into mangled sleep. Her dreams had no visual aspect, but were more fog and a cold flow of alien feelings … unpleasant and fleeting. She felt herself running away, bare feet flying in the empty night. And she felt something inside her that she was trying to save. The baby appeared as warmth and light - a fragile orb she had to protect. Then cold arms touched her; tentacles that made her shudder. She saw a face of jagged ice and evil, and heard a voice. “The child has been promised to me,” it whispered. “Promised as a sacrifice to me.” It was a haunting voice, its tone evil and knowing. It filled her with terror, causing her to wake.

Icy wind rushed through the open window. She rose and went over to close it. As she grabbed the slide, the curtain brushed past her face, and she saw out into the night. Below, the fog had thinned and was drifting into pockets. The treetops were rocking in a strong breeze, and above them she could see the moon. A dark cloud was rising on the horizon in the shape of an angel. A night angel, she thought, and the thought made her shiver. She remembered the voice from the dream and felt her flesh become clammy and cold. She shut the window quickly, pulled the curtains tight, hurried back to bed, and sat shivering under the covers.

The agony and fever had gone on for so long that Jason wasn’t sure if it had been hours or days. It was hard to even conceive of himself as a human being while in such anguish. Nightmares rushed like a distorted video in his mind. Monsters and confusing images of disaster took shape. Hideous faces and the false memories of delirium doped him with shock after shock … brain-twisting special effects that contained sickening horror and new forms of pain. He’d wake to stinging flesh and try to scream, only to find himself tightly bound and gagged. Alert, he’d moan low for hours as his knotted muscles fed his brain with pulsing aches from swelling and bruises. It would ascend to a pinnacle, and then he’d faint. He'd wake and rise out of black waters to nightmares and go through the whole thing again.

This time it was worse - a foul odor made the gagging stronger, and the thought of dying on vomit seemed like pleasant sunshine. He heard heavy boots hitting a hardwood floor, and it caused hope to rise in his mind. Someone was coming - perhaps he was being rescued. It was a shining thought, but a red jolt of stabbing pain immediately replaced it. He felt the hard boots shoving his stiff legs aside, then the blindfold was suddenly torn off and brilliant light exploded like needles of fire in his eyes.

Jason couldn't see a thing - just light whirling like alien eggbeaters. A rough hand pinched his face, then the cloth was ripped from his mouth, nearly taking his dry tongue along with it. The light eased and spilled like blurry sugar in his eyes. A train of bruised thoughts began to chug in his mind. Strong odors rose to his blood-caked nostrils, and he felt his stomach heave like it’d been punched. He vomited uncontrollably; a burning mass shot through his lips, tearing at his throat like hot acid. Needles of numbness and pain covered his skin like moving quills as his flesh convulsed, but he couldn't stop. He heaved many times, then fell still.

Hot steam drifted into his face. A form began to take shape - a tall man working over a portable stove. Thick vapors rose from a bulbous black pot, and Jason guessed that it was the source of the vile odors.

As his vision cleared, his eyes darted about the room. This was a huge place. It looked like he was in the hydro warehouse next to his house. He could see boxes and rolls of copper cable piled in stacks. He focused on some burlap bags in a corner and noticed bloodstains. Then he spotted a swollen and blackened hand protruding from a hole in the cloth, and he nearly started vomiting again as he realized that a corpse was the source of the odor.

The big man was turning to face him, but Jason couldn't see him clearly. His face seemed dark and distorted. His eyes were like smoldering iron.

“Your sins of the flesh have wounded you, Jason,” he said. “We don't want your flesh to become infected like your astral body. The Night Angel asks that you be healed. As the warlock father of the evil child, you will atone by working with me and ensuring the child is not born. You will not try to resist. Your past of evil powers and magic has put you in our control and saved your life. We need you, and because of that, will spare you.” He held up a slender-necked bottle of opaque green glass. “This is science, and it is a magic potion that will cleanse your mind of evil thoughts. It will allow you to confess, speak of your past, and tell us the name of the demon that owns your soul.”

Thick liquid rose in Jason's throat and choked him. He couldn't speak. A memory came to him; images from years ago, when he'd been in a coven down in New Mexico. In ceremonies of blood, sex, and magic, he’d promised his soul and his firstborn child to a demon. But he’d never believed it. He’d done it all for the thrill, drugs, and sex. Now this madman was going to force him to drink poison to get the name of the demon. The name - he thought back, seeing vivid smoke and flames. Night Angel was the name. He'd promised his firstborn child as a sacrifice to the Night Angel, and in the ceremony, the angel had been called as an ancient force of evil, named as the spawn of Satan in secret hieroglyphs.

Jason wasn't sure who this madman was, but the creep was certainly deluded if he thought of himself as some sort of priest, and of the Night Angel as a holy force opposed to sin. Perhaps he’d been brainwashed by a coven of the Night Angel and sent here to destroy him and his first child. The coven was seeing to it that the promise was kept. If so, it meant that deluded or not, this character was as deadly as Satan.

Jason knew there wasn't any such being as the Night Angel. The occult was all fraud; a product of warped minds and drug-induced visions. He was certain of it, but he also knew that certainty would matter very little in the long run to the people this monster thought he was serving. This man could still make people very ugly, very sick, and very dead.

Gulping hard, Jason felt blood and agony shoot through his badly bruised neck. His captor was studying him like a bug, looking him up and down before he spoke. “The natural healing must begin”, Tam said authoritatively. And he turned back to the pot and began pouring various ingredients into the furiously boiling liquid. “Herbs to heal your wounds,” he said. “A bottle of wood alcohol to cleanse your skin, bark extracts to destroy the germs. Spring water to purify …”

He stirred the smoking pot with a large wooden spoon, and then he scooped out a wide flask of the boiling liquid and turned. “Let the healing begin!” he said as he reached out and poured the chemical on Jason's bare legs.

Jason screamed as the liquid scalded his already tortured flesh, and along with the pain, the words, “The father of the Satan seed will be cleansed!” were scorched into his brain.

Soft beams of morning sunlight shone through the dining room window and warmed the polished wood. The early day appeared crisp and cold, and the evils of night seemed far away. Rosemary sipped vanilla tea, and except for dust motes in the sunbeams, the room stood sparse and spotless. In her thoughts, she looked for exit signs that might take her out of her current situation, but she found none, and in the process, ended up thinking about Karren.

Karren had lost both her husband and son. Cleanliness remained; that and the aching of loss. A bad marriage had ended in financial stability and a loveless life. Rosemary supposed nearly the same would happen to her if Jason remained in control. Except that she would only have the loveless part, minus the financial stability.

The sun painted a rainbow in the clear glass of the neatly inlaid window, and the beauty of the day imprisoned her. After years of a comfortable home, the clean new setting felt like an institution. It felt like Jason already had her put away. He’d rejected her, and she'd been forced to leave home. He'd left her no other choice. And now she was here, and the beautiful sun continued to shine on a life that had become cold and empty. Thinking things over, she understood why some people refused to bring children into the world. Human warmth hadn’t entered their lives, and they didn't want little ones along to share the pain of the journey.

Karren came down the stairs at 10:30, a tired expression suspended like a mask on her face. She refused Rosemary's offer to cook a hot breakfast and ate nothing. After wiping the kitchen counters, she joined Rosemary in the dining room, cradling a cup of black coffee as she stared absently out the window at the chilly day.

“I phoned home early this morning,” Rosemary said. “Jason isn't there, and I didn't leave a message on the machine. He must have gone to work. I used the 632A code first, so he can't trace this number.”

“I doubt he went to work. At this stage, they usually alternate between brooding and searching for their spouse. He's probably called just about everyone you know by now. I guess he hasn't remembered me yet. Don't answer any calls here. If you're alone, let the machine take it and then check who it is. In his case, he's unpredictable. I'm not sure how he’d react, but I’m sure he can't take a lot of frustration. He's probably dangerous and may try to assault you. You have to set the terms of the meeting with him to be in control.”

“Jason's been displaying moods of abusive rage for a while … without any reason - unless the idea of being a father is too much for his businessman's pea brain. Maybe he just hates me.”

“If he hated you, he would’ve run off or physically thrown you out. He's in a poor mental state. I think his love has become an obsession. We'll talk that over with the psychiatrist today. He's dealt with many similar cases, so he'll know what Jason is about.”

The distant sun had a lonely effect. Their phones didn't ring or show messages at all that morning. At noon, Karren and Rosemary drove three kilometers across town to the Walker Street Mall. It was light parking as the lot was only half full, and the crowd wasn't large. Rosemary felt uncomfortable on the open mall floors. It would be too easy for someone who knew Jason to spot her, and if he had called around, probably several people had their eyes open. Ducking quickly into shops with Karren, she watched jealously as she tried on sensual tops and dresses that would never fit her own swollen body.

Rosemary stocked up on lip gloss, perfume, and other necessary items at the drugstore, and then they enjoyed a sweet lunch at the Just Deserts hut in the mall food gallery. One p.m. approached, and Karren felt it was time to head over to Doctor Mather's office.

The medical offices were in the same sprawling complex, just a stroll down from the shopping area. They pushed through a heavy door of varnished wood into a sterile environment of piped-in satellite music, rubber plants, and swirled glass and plastic ornaments. The elevator rose in a clear plastic tube, dropping them at the fourth-floor level, and from there it was a short stroll to the doctor's office.

His office was more mall sterility, but vastly improved by the presence of his receptionist. Margaret was an attractive redhead with a knack for getting close to other women. Karren spent five minutes discussing local gossip with her, then informed her of the emergency appointment she’d booked for Rosemary. They sat and read fashion magazines while they waited.

Doctor Mather emerged twenty minutes later. He was a short, plump man wearing an elegant suit. Rosemary was surprised as she'd expected a man of strong stature.

The doctor gave Karren an intimate smile. Overall, Rosemary had a good feeling about him, though she found it hard to see him as a tough customer who could handle abusive husbands or patients who were dangerously mentally ill.

His initial consultation room, as he called it, looked like a living room. It had a couch, leather chairs, and soothing nature scenes hung on the paneled walls. The polished ashtrays and an old television set appeared to be there for decoration.

Thick casebooks lined the library shelves, and the doctor took one down, opened a page, and wrote her name and a few personal details on a fresh page. She studied the rotund man as he wrote; he had large blue eyes that brimmed with kindness, gray hair that had receded gracefully, and a healthy, unwrinkled face despite his age. He looked wise in the way a reverend would be wise, but he hardly looked like someone who knew a lot of personal business and dark secrets.

“You still do everything by pen?” Rosemary said. “I guess you're from the old school.”

“Oh, I suppose you expected computers and recordings. They create a barrier between doctor and patient. I don't favor them. We do have computers for billing and tax purposes, but they aren’t here. I also don't trust them as a medium for case files. There are hackers who can break into them, and it’s easy for people to copy and distribute information. Your file will be handwritten by me and viewed by no one else. I keep my files on that shelf, and once it's locked, it is fireproof and burglar-proof. It is also held to the floor by heavy bolts.”

“Karren says you have experience dealing with abusive husbands and with cults and the occult.”

“Yes, and it's a dangerous area. I know you probably expected a big man. I use a detective agency when security is required. Based on what Karren has told me, I can tell you immediately what I’ll probably recommend regarding your husband, Jason. That is, you must stay where you are and not tell him where you are. If it becomes possible, I’ll contact him and arrange a meeting. That way I can assess him first. Abusive types are experts at manipulation. A line of intelligent defense must be set up to prevent them from controlling the situation. This also reveals the extent of their personal anger. If murderous anger is brewing within, he’ll start phoning me, threatening to use force. Though he’ll never really do that because it’s the spouse the abusive husband wants to reach.”

“I'm glad you're straightforward on this.”

“It's the only way that works. Let's talk about Jason. Karren told me a bit about his recent strange behaviour. On the occult involvement - I understand that it was years ago and he was never in so deep that it involved deprogramming or trouble with the law.”

“Someone's been sacrificing animals in the yard. Jason is the only person out there at the time it happens. He was involved in a cult years ago - some sort of witchcraft practice and belief in a fallen angel. Last week, I found this medallion placed under the mattress. He put it right below my midsection. He may have some superstitious beliefs regarding the baby and thinks this medallion will provide protection. He denies putting it there.”

Doctor Mather took the medallion and turned it over in his palm. The metal was tarnished. A raised angel wing was on one side, a grinning skull on the other. It looked to be ancient. “I've never seen these particular images before. I can do some checking. This seems to be some obscure and unknown group, and that's good. I mean, it's good that he's not involved with a group known to be dangerous.”

The Halloween Servant

Tam's poison programmed Jason's mind into a charged medium of hellish visions - a renegade neuron set switching uncontrollably through a grotesque horrorscape. Sometimes images would normalize for a few minutes, and he'd see the grinning face of his captor, then the head would melt into a skull, and the attacking demons of strychnine would take over again. In lucid moments, the realization of it all delivered fear even more gut-wrenching than that of the visions. Hell didn’t appear as an alien place or an exotic land of the damned. It appeared as a suddenly familiar place - as a universe in his mind that he’d forgotten for some years.

Fallen saints walked broken-backed in rags on broad streets paved with the petrified corpses of murdered children. Angels writhed in white agony as madmen screamed. The city of gold burned bright with fire and brimstone. Raging winds carried the mighty howls of wicked beasts.

Corruption licked up like flames in his mind, and more visions followed; an endless concatenation of evil. All of it took place in his soul. All of it was part of him. The nightmare rose in consciousness as intimate memories now reborn, and the terror was in knowing that every human had such a corner of the mind … a personal hell, infinite and merciless, coded in the genes and developing in the brain from the day of birth … waiting for the dark hand of the angel and the turn of the key that would unlock it.

In time, the visions receded in the shadows of his drugged brain, and something unseen and hideous began to creep into the light. He remembered the excruciating pain of his healing and the shock of the poison, and it didn't bother him because he'd gone completely numb. Numbness penetrated his thoughts, his brain, his flesh, and his bones - like he'd become a plant or organic life that couldn't feel anything at all. Hades and poison had destroyed his spirit and left him empty.

Tingling in his toes led him to look down the length of his body. He saw that he was bandaged and realized that his body was probably a huge mass of scar and burn tissue. He couldn't bring himself to care about it at all; probably because Jason was dead, or all he had believed was dead … which was really nothing at all - a mass of lusting flesh had gone numb. Lusting flesh was all that most men were, so in understanding that, he knew he had lost nothing.

His vision clearing, he looked around the room, then breathed deeply, finding the stink of the corpses as fine as perfume. As he exhaled, the door opened, and he sat up and watched Tam enter the room.

Tam's eyes had the brightness of moonbeams. They held a strange power he couldn’t fathom, and when Tam looked down at him, it was with understanding. He saw no pity or hate in those pupils.

“Be thankful that the angel needs you,” Tam said. “Because of need, you have been saved. And you are a higher being. Vanity and the sensual nature have been removed so that obedience will come easily to you. Nothing has been left for you but to serve the angel, and you will begin by aiding us in destroying Rosemary and the evil child she carries.”

Halloween fell on a Saturday, and it arrived in a rush of tropical air up from the Gulf of Mexico. After a rather uneventful day at home, Karren surprised Rosemary with the news that she'd be working on Halloween eve. In the public health business, the forces of witches, goblins, and holidays brought more customers into the hospital for treatment. Rosemary concluded that she’d never be personally happy in that sort of occupation. Home life and holidays were just too important to her.

This Halloween also wore warts because she wasn't at home. She was still at Karren's and feeling rootless and depressed. She didn't want to go out by herself, and she didn't want to be alone in the house. As partial compensation, she'd bought bags of candies and treats and a pumpkin at the neighborhood store. Passing out goodies to the kids seemed like the best way to kill the evening, and time was already passing as she set up tables and bowls in the hall. She filled a punch bowl with jellybeans and tiny chocolate bars, topped off a cookie can with kisses, and set a large sack of mixed nuts near the door. Triple-sized suckers in large cellophane wrappers stamped with a nutty pumpkin face were her feature candies. A carton of tiny potato chip bags and a flat of toffee packs rounded out her selection.

When the candy bowls were arranged to her liking, she went back to the kitchen to finish the design on her jack-o'-lantern. It had already been gutted, and the pulp tossed. Using a fruit knife, she carved out a mischievous face - slanted eyes, triangular nose, and jagged teeth. It was too windy for a candle, so she used a battery-powered night-light instead. It had a yellow-tinted bulb that made for a nice effect when she placed it inside.

She cradled the glowing pumpkin above her swollen belly like it was a second baby and headed for the front, carefully passing the tables and candy bowls. As she opened the door, the wind whipped across the porch and sent her hair flying. It tore at the candy wrappers, so she stepped out quickly and shut the door. Gusts were sweeping the yard, but the air didn't seem all that humid. She guessed it would be a very windy night, but not a rainy one.

She placed the pumpkin on a sturdy porch bench, then looked out at the last dying haze of sunset. Strong claws of wind raked leaves across the yard. Twilight deepened the sky, and an enormous dark cloud rose on the eastern horizon. She didn't see any kids approaching, and the wind whistled loudly on the balconies of nearby apartments, making her wonder if the night was safe enough for them. She decided it wasn't that bad yet and went back inside.

Stepping over to the hall mirror, she fixed her strewn hair, and before she was done, the first trick-or-treaters arrived. The door opened with a spooky creak, and she saw three costumed kids standing by the porch pumpkin. “Treat,” they said, holding their bags forward.

Wind tore at their bags and ruffled their costumes, adding to the Halloween effect. Rosemary supposed the kids loved the windy night as it gave them more opportunities to scare people. She tried to look fair, but she actually gave the most candy to a tiny ghost and the least to a big pirate. She didn't believe big kids should be out for Halloween except to look after the little ones.

“Give me more,” said the pirate. “I didn't get any chocolate bars.”

“Why should I?” Rosemary said, frowning.

“Because the news says a big wind storm is coming. Probably most kids won't be allowed out. You need me to eat all your candy, or you'll eat it yourself and get even fatter than you are.”

“I'm not fat, I'm pregnant,” Rosemary said, her cheeks reddening as she stuffed some small chocolates into his bag.

The smaller kids said thanks as she closed the door. She watched through the glass as they walked off in a helter-skelter wind, then the phone rang, and she went down the hall to answer it.

The call was from Doctor Mather, and he sounded unusually excited and out of breath. “I talked with Jason and don't feel he's dangerous. He came to the office yesterday. I arranged a first meeting for the two of you, then I had to run out for an emergency call. One of my suicidal patients. My secretary forgot to notify you. It's for tonight at your house. I'm going over now, and I want you to meet me there in an hour. We're going to talk things over with Jason. It should go well. He sounds like he has guilt feelings. It's a start anyway.”

“This is all happening rather fast,” Rosemary said. “I don't know if I want to see him. I'd rather talk to him on the phone first.”

“Okay, do that - but you must see him now, or his condition might worsen. Grab a cab and meet me there.”

The line went dead as Doctor Mather hung up, and an unknown fear started her fingers trembling. In her heart, she didn't want to talk to Jason just yet, but despite that, she robotically pushed the numbers.

The phone rang once, and the call was picked up. Two strange beeps were followed by a delay, and then Jason. He said hello in a voice so hoarse and dry she wasn't sure who it was.

“Jason, is that you?”

“Of course it’s me.”

“Are you sure no one else is listening in. What's the matter with your voice?”

“No one’s here. I have a sore throat, so it's hard for me to talk. If you hear interference, it’s probably the wind. The power has been blinking on and off for a while.”

“Are you sure you want me to come over tonight?”

“I love you, darling,” he said in a voice so wooden it seemed like he was talking to a tree or a wall.

“You certainly haven't been acting as if you do.”

“I realize that now. I had a long talk with Doctor Mather. He’s opened my eyes to my reckless ways.”

“You sound more like he’s hypnotized you. Maybe you should be in bed.”

“No. Our relationship is too important to ignore. I want you to come over. I have a surprise that will make you feel much better about things.”

“All right, but only for a talk. I don't plan on returning home yet.”

“You don't have to. Come over, and we'll talk. Maybe get some sort of understanding.”

Rosemary put the phone down. The conversation had done little other than make her feel dizzy and unsettled. Her feelings for Jason had grown about as flat as his voice. If he cared about her, why wasn't he angry or sad? He came across as a bad actor reading his script in an emotionless monotone. She suspected Doctor Mather was telling him what to say. But then maybe Jason was just weird and only experienced emotions and anger at the wrong times.

The doorbell rang, interrupting her thoughts. She had no time for speculation, so she decided to take her mind off it for another half an hour and have some fun with the kids.

A small stream of the little ones poured in from the blustery night, and in less than half an hour, the candy was nearly gone. She decided she'd had enough, took in the pumpkin, and shut off the porch light. Before leaving for home, she thought about calling Karren, then decided to keep her out of it. Doctor Mather wanted to meet her there, so she called him to confirm. His answering machine picked up, so she figured he'd already left. After dialing a cab, she waited outside on the porch.

The wind rattled constantly as it hurled twigs into the tin garbage cans. Dust devils swept up leaves on the road, swirled, and exploded into dark chaos; she could already see a fallen branch in the side yard. It didn't seem like a friendly night at all, and she hoped the stormy weather wasn't an indication of things to come in her relationship with Jason.

The Citywide cab streaked up the empty road at surprising speed and braked hard at the curb. She walked down and got in, hoping the driver was going to keep to the speed limit on the trip across town. The cabby was a young Black man with a protest sign taped to a side window.

Rosemary gave him the address. “What exactly are you guys protesting?” she said.

“More government regulation of the taxi industry,” he said. “Too many inspections and rules. It's costing us a fortune. You don't know what it's like, lady. Ever had someone take over your life? Ever had that feeling? There aren't many genuine taxis left today.”

“Yes,” she said, a nasty picture of Jason forming in her mind.

“Then you know that when that happens, you've got to fight, and if you don't fight, you're handing over the power. The monkey on your back will strangle you if you don't get him off.”

“I see what you mean,” she replied. And in her thoughts, she pictured herself handing the household power back to Jason. She was certain he didn't love her. He wanted a sex toy, a wife, and a child he could control. He was setting her up to conquer her again. Doctor Mather was probably completely fooled by him. A tear formed in the corner of her eye as she realized she’d never go back to Jason. She wanted a divorce.

Rosemary sighed. Her lungs filled with stale air. She hit the window button, opening it a crack. The wind slashed in like a knife, and the glass began to vibrate so fast it sounded like a saw. Irritated, she took a couple of deep breaths, then powered the glass shut just as they hit the valley overpass.

A moment later, the wind buffeted the car. The taxi driver remained unperturbed and sped up, fighting his way across the bridge. The expressway below was jammed, the valley traffic resembling a long sparkling necklace.

Traffic on the far side of the bridge was also bottlenecked, and as they reached Yonge Street, the line of cars ground to a halt. High-rises towered on all sides, amplifying the gusts. She saw a newspaper fly by like a kite, and then a whoosh of wind from an alley carried a rain of dust and cigarette butts into the hood.

A pizza box tumbled out of the dark and sailed like a bizarre orange omen over a sudden fender bender. Lacking patience, her taxi driver spat and swore, then swung onto the sidewalk. Pushing through startled pedestrians, he went down a dark alley. At the next block, he made a left. An opening appeared in the bottleneck, and he zoomed through it and raced down some side streets.

He drove the rest of the way at a good clip. Coming down Sally Bird Hill, he plowed through blowing leaves, and then the car entered her neighborhood, first cruising past a costumed crowd lined up out front of a theatre.

Rosemary took a casual look at the people. They didn't seem festive at all, but appeared lame and weak as they huddled against the wind. The one exception was a big man whose face was covered by a demon mask. He leered in the window at her as they passed. Twigs and leaf bits were caught up in his wind-strewn wig. Streetlights reflected like moon pools in his eyes, making him seem almost like a real demon, and for a moment she had a flashback of the strange man she'd seen at the funeral home.

They turned into residential streets, and as the car closed in on her driveway, she noticed that the hill and house were shrouded in darkness. The cabby braked and stopped before turning in. Looking around, she saw that all the lights in the subdivision were on. It was only her house and the hydro yard that were blacked out.

Powering down his window, the cabby stuck his head out. “The power line to your house is down. I can see it hanging over the fence and those bushes. It's a live wire, so make sure you don't go near it before the repair crew arrives.”

“Damn, it has to happen now. Just pull in. I'll deal with it.”

Nosing in the cabby drove uphill slowly, the sweep of his headlights illuminating a chaotic scene of wind-bent boughs and flying leaves. The car rocked to a stop, and Rosemary said a simple keep the change and good night as she paid the fare and got out.

The headlights lit the walk and front door, but they didn't reveal anything other than leaves skating across the empty night. She pushed forward against the wind, and as she walked away, the taxi pulled out, leaving her in darkness and a swirl of debris. “Geez, why didn't the idiot stay till I got to the door?” she muttered. “And where is Jason?” she thought. “What a gentleman he is - leaving me out in this wicked storm.”

A flying twig snapped into her eye. She stumbled and banged her knee on hard metal. Her hand touched the cold painted surface of the car, a station wagon. She realized that it had to be Doctor Mather's car. He'd parked it partly off the driveway beside a willow tree.

She'd hit her funny bone, so she waited by the car until the tingling stopped. Dark mist raced over the moon above, and some faint light filtered through the crooked web of branches. The front door shone in faint moonlight, and as she was about to take a step, a branch snapped and whipped the ground beside her. Spooked, she broke into a run for the door and then halted a few feet from it.

The old house really was an eerie place this time, enough so that she was afraid to go inside. Something was definitely wrong. The situation worried her. Jason should've met her at the door. Perhaps his condition had gotten worse. And what about her doctor?

She edged closer, then Jason's voice came to her on a snatch of wind. She looked around for him and realized that the sound was coming from the door speaker. Her fear transformed into anger. If Jason's new caring nature involved being too busy to answer the door, she wanted none of it.

Pacing to the entrance, she yanked the door open and stepped into the dark hall. She couldn't see a thing, so she called out. “Jason, where are you?”

His voice echoed and seemed to come from the ceiling. “I'm in the living room, honey.”

As she reached the end of the hall, she noticed a haze of light in the doorway and turned. A single guttering candle lit the room. Jason was sitting on a recliner in the far corner. Only his form and large moving shadows showed. She could barely see him.

“What's going on here? Why didn't you come to the door when I arrived?”

“I was in the basement. The storm broke some windows, and I was down there checking the damage. I didn't hear you arrive.”

“What about Doctor Mather? Where'd he go?”

“The phone here has gone dead. He went out to his car for his cell phone.”

“I didn't see him out there.”

“Maybe he's still in the car. Give it a minute, and if he isn't back, I’ll go out and take a look.”

“We better. Branches are falling out there. He could've been hit.”

“I hope not. I don't need more problems.”

“Listen, Jason, you'll have to wait here in the dark for a minute. I'm going up to the bedroom. There are a couple of things I need.”

“Okay, go ahead.”

Scooping up the candleholder, Rosemary headed for the stairs. She walked up carefully, found the bedroom, and looked around. She could hear the wind knocking hard at the window. She walked to the dresser, opened a bottom drawer, and took out her diary. She checked the lock and found it firm. She didn’t want Jason reading it, and she wanted to take it to Karren's place. A nightlight stood by the mirror. It was battery-powered and shaped like a rocking horse. She flicked the switch, but it didn't work. She guessed Jason might have batteries, so she picked it up and carried it downstairs.

Back in the living room, she placed the candle on the coffee table and sat on the couch. “I need batteries, Jason. Where are they?”

“I think I have some with the flashlights out in the shed. We'll have to go out anyway. Something must've happened to the Doctor; he hasn't returned.”

“Okay,” Rosemary said, twisting at the battery lid of the rocking horse as she spoke. She stood up, prepared to leave, then something clicked at her fingertips, and the portable light came on.

It was quite brilliant without its cover, its power lighting up the whole room. Shadows were cast out, and Jason suddenly got to his feet. Rosemary blinked - the vision of Jason taking shape in her mind was too impossible to believe. She was so certain that it was a bizarre trick of the light that it didn't fully register at first.

The grotesquerie failed to fade. It solidified in the shifting light created by her trembling hands. A rumpled cap of burned scalp and ragged strands of dead hair topped Jason's head. His eyes were black gun slits in a massive purple bruise, and his nose was mashed below them - veins pulsing above the nostrils like thick fibers in a transparent slice of melon. His mouth resembled a slash made by a butcher knife, and his clothing was a bloody tatter of stained skin and rags.

“I didn’t want you to see this,” Jason said, stepping forward slowly.

And in Rosemary's mind, he stepped from an impossible nightmare into reality. The floorboards creaked, and the sound penetrated like a ghostly explosion in her ears. Her scalp tightened, and her hair rose. Fear and revulsion swept her with incredible speed. She didn't make a sound but just threw the night light at him, turned, and fled wildly down the dark hall. Heavy footsteps sounded behind her as she reached the door. She stopped, fumbled with the handle, and screamed in terror when it didn't move. A second try opened it, and she burst out into the night and ran deep into the yard.

Wind kicked her with such force that it felt like she was running against a net. Her hair tore back, her muscles strained, then the blow weakened, and she burst forward and tumbled in the leaves. Rolling up, she glanced back and saw Jason standing in the moonlight by the door. A machete gleamed in his blackened hand as he scanned the darkness, trying to locate her.

A faint patch of yellow light showed to her left. She turned quickly and saw that the interior light had come on in Doctor Mather's car. A door was partially open, but no one appeared to be inside. She guessed that the wind had sucked it open.

The light also revealed her to Jason, and he growled and began striding toward her. She got up quickly and ran, her knees slapping in wet grass. Heading for the car, she hoped either the keys were inside, or the Doctor was nearby.

Reaching the light, she swept the car door open and tossed herself inside - all in a smooth thrust that would've worked had something not blocked her. She dogpaddled over it, tumbling on her side toward the passenger seat, and then horror rose as she felt the touch of cold flesh. She kicked it away as she scrambled the rest of the way to the passenger side.

The interior light still glowed. She looked to the wheel, then screamed when she saw Doctor Mather slumped below it. Blood poured from his swollen lips. A huge bullet wound marred the side of his head.

Something gleamed on the carpeting - the handle of a pistol, and the terrible truth grew in her mind ... the encounter with Jason had snapped the Doctor's mind, and he’d shot himself.

And her mind was threatening to snap, too. The Jason thing was coming up to the door … with faint yellow light webbing his face, and crooked boughs highlighted behind him, he appeared as the most terrifying of human ghouls. She wondered what sort of evil force could do such a thing to a man, and she realized that she was up against much more than the Jason thing. This was something wicked and unknown.

In moments, Jason would be in the car. She hit the lock beside her, then looked in the back. Both rear doors were locked, so she only had to deal with the driver's side. The corpse was leaning partway out the door - one arm dangling to the ground.

Jason was nearly on her. There was no time to manipulate the body. She leaned sideways and shoved it hard, sending it tumbling out. The feet still hung in the way, and Jason was right at the door, reaching for the handle. Scrambling over, she grabbed the heels and forced them out. Then she pulled the door shut hard and heard Jason roar.

She sighed in temporary relief and then noticed sticky blood on the steering wheel. Her eyes went to the ignition, and her relief ended when she saw that the key was partially turned and broken off. A tiny portion protruded, but she'd need pliers to turn it.

Except for a faint dash light, it was dark in the car. A hand banged against the side, then there was silence. Noise returned with scratching on the hood, and as her eyes adjusted, she saw Jason dragging an enormous fallen tree branch. His machete blade flashed in the moonlight as he chopped at it. Then he put the blade aside and moved to lift the branch. Shifting his weight, he swung it over the hood and into the windshield. It hit with a hard thump that scratched the glass. Rosemary ducked below the dash as the second blow came in and put a small spiderweb crack in the plastic.

Fear rose and paralyzed her as she peeked up and watched the branch fly in again. It hit with a crash, and when the crack expanded to a huge indentation, she gained the will to move and seize the dead doctor's gun from the floor. A dull black weapon with a Glock embossing, it was so powerful that it had blown most of his head off. She held it in both hands and shook so hard she waved it from side to side.

His eyes flaring and carrying a gleam of hatred, Jason raised the branch for a final, deadly blow … sweat, slime, and ghoulish intent gleaming on his face as he prepared to swing. She heard him grunt as he strained, then the branch came in hard and shattered a portion of the windshield. Cubed fragments showered in, and when the branch pulled back, a fist-sized hole remained.

He dropped the branch and retrieved his machete. He threw himself up on the hood, his hands slipping and banging as he crawled up to the hole. Raising the machete, he began hitting the edge of the hole with its butt. Blunt stars of shining fake glass flew in as he enlarged it.

Rosemary's eyes widened with horror as the hideous face stared in at her. Foul breath touched her nostrils. She felt like crying and vomiting at the same time, but did neither. Instead, she raised the Glock, pointed it at Jason's forehead, and pulled the trigger.

Death was instant. His face exploded like a red melon, and his body slammed on the hood. She saw his fingers trail blood and twitch as he slid off the car and into the leaves.

Her hands stung from the recoil, but shock kept the gun hard in her fingers. She remained frozen for a few seconds, then the side window shattered, a hand reached in and grabbed her hair, and she fainted dead away.

Evil Angel

Tam kicked Jason's tattered shoulder, rolling the crushed skull face up. The exposed flesh, rot, and oozing brain matter made him shiver. He shook his head in disgust - all that work done in creating a zombie, and it couldn't even handle a pregnant woman. So much effort had gone into it; he felt like crying, then like beating Rosemary to death for spoiling his work.

The mixed emotions confused him momentarily, then he spat and decided the body was too close to the driveway and rolled it back out of sight in the heaps of damp leaves. Getting to his knees, he shoved the dead doctor under the car.

He turned to Rosemary, and his anger became a cruel smile as he studied her limp form. She'd fainted inside the car. Now that he had her, tremendous relief swept him, followed by an even greater wind that slammed the door shut as he reached inside. It closed hard on his hand, and he howled and stepped back. Tightening his lips to a white line, he moved forward to open the door and pull her out.

He dragged her carelessly, and she flopped limply in the deep grass. It was hard to move anything in such a strong wind, so he rolled her onto her back, took her arms, and began pulling her like a sled on a downhill track to the totem. His direction was against the press of the gale, and it cut his movements to the speed of molasses.

Gazing up at the unforgiving sky, he saw clouds racing over the moon in a continuous pattern of wings. They beat down as a dark force that roared through the trees, creating a swaying, rubbing, and creaking of branches - frightening alien sounds that would terrify a common person. Tam heard them as the angel's siren song.

Halfway down the hill, a fist of wind ripped up the rise and slammed him with wet leaves and filthy dust, and he spat, perversely enjoying the taste of the mud. After a moment's pause, he pulled Rosemary over some exposed tree roots and onto the bottom, and the totem.

Tam looked barely human. He was covered in stains and dirt from days spent outdoors and in the warehouse. Yet in his mind, euphoria and power rose, and he felt himself to be the pinnacle of human endeavor.

His eyes returned to Rosemary's pregnant body, and instant rage coursed through his veins. His vision penetrated, and he saw a hideous male creature baring its fangs beneath her flesh. Resisting the urge to pounce on her and stab the thing to death, he kicked her legs, then handled her roughly as he tied her left wrist to the totem.

He tried to revive her with a sharp slap. She stirred but failed to awaken fully. This caused him to frown. Killing her while she was awake would be so much better, but it wasn't necessary. The job had to be done, so if she didn't come around soon, he'd have to finish her in her sleep.

He hadn't lit the ceremonial lamps, and his dagger needed preparing, so he turned from her and pulled out his lighter. Raising the stained glass, he lit the first wick, then he stepped back and let the light fill him with its radiance. He noticed that the lamps weren't in a proper circle, so he took time to arrange them before he lit the rest.

Gusts of wind came in and steadily jabbed him back. Finally, he had to crouch to keep from being blown away. The lamps rattled despite their heavy supports, and he began to worry that if he didn't finish soon, they’d be shattered. There was also the possibility of trees falling and destroying the circle.

Tam reached for his angel wing dagger and came up empty. He groaned in frustration as he realized he'd left it back at the warehouse. He couldn't finish without it, so he turned and ran up toward the fence. Thistles whipped at his ankles, knuckles of wind rumbled along the fence boards, and a loose timber at the end slammed back and forth with heavy thuds.

He slipped through a gap in the broken boards and looked around the hydro yard. A few emergency lights cast a faint and eerie orange glow. A roof had torn away from one of the sheds and shingles were strewn across the grounds.

A chunk of rotten plywood cracked underfoot as he stepped behind some stacks of bound crates. He went down the row, emerged at the main storage shed, and entered it through a side door. A warm, putrid stench wafted through the room, and he gagged as he moved along the shelving in the darkness.

Light from an emergency spotlight flooded through the glass, illuminating the central area. He spotted the angel dagger where he'd left it - stuck into a crate board. Hurrying over, he pulled it out, and as he turned to leave, he saw a van cruise up and park in the warehouse lot. He edged over to the window as the headlights went out and a lone worker emerged. The interior lights showed no one else in the vehicle.

The man hunched against the wind as he walked toward some rolls of heavily insulated cable. Tam watched him like a predator while he decided on what action to take. He decided that he didn't want anyone in the way, so he grabbed an unhinged safety door from a stack by the wall and threw it through the glass.

Brilliant shards burst into the small spotlighted area. The wind caught the door as it fell to the gravel and sent it skidding a ways across the lot. The burly worker turned, his gaze focusing on the explosion of glass. He watched the door slide and didn't see Tam. A situation Tam took advantage of as he leaped through the frame and threw the dagger. His motion was liquid, his toss strong and accurate, catching the guy in the chest near the heart. And death came so quickly that the flat press of the man's lips remained, and he never got a chance to reveal either pain or surprise. He lifted his arms partway up, then he fell on his face like a statue kicked over by the wind.

Tam pulled the dagger from the corpse and ran so fast he was panting as he dodged through the fence. The whoosh of wind almost lifted him off his feet, then darkness and the circle of colored lamplight filled his vision, and he felt the magic of the Night Angel and the powers of evil tongues descend. He began to chant softly as he headed over the rough ground to Rosemary, the wind tearing his words away as he uttered them, like they were treasures snatched for the gods. Air currents above shrieked in a long cry, and the Night Angel took shape out of icy clouds. Its hood of darkness shrouded the trees, and its wings added a cutting edge to the winds.

The power of the spell woke Rosemary, and the eternity of loss that awaited her grew as an emotion of deep terror in her eyes. Tam saw an aura of the angel envelop her, and she rose as a supernatural vision, inspiring his chant and sending his voice into louder, frenzied tones. He lifted fingers and hands that felt like swift wings, ready to fly with the blade, carrying its sacrificial blow to her belly and the growing demon seed.

Closing in, he detected subtle agony in her face. Her lips trembled and slipped in and out of a pleasurable grimace. Tam was sure it meant childbirth. He didn’t have time to complete the full ceremony. If he didn't strike now before the child emerged from the womb, it would be too late.

His hand and the dagger flew up, flashing a silver arc in the night. His lips twitched, and his morbid eye moved as he targeted the blow. He slowly stepped in to strike, and then he saw red dripping on the blade and fell to his knees. Blood from the workman he'd killed in the hydro yard still coated the blade - a taste of murder that the evil child would feed on and use as re-channeled energy to destroy him.

The magic of the chant vanished from his lips as if it had never been there. Panting desperately, he pulled his flask of water from his pouch and quickly wet the blade. He cleansed it with a strip of linen, then he looked up and saw Rosemary's eyes closing … the painful joy of childbirth flushing her face with radiant beauty. He still had time to end it, and with her eyes shut, the end would come easily for her. He rose on his knees, his body bending with the flexibility of a snake, and he held the blade in both hands to make sure he planted it hard and firm. His muscles unwound smoothly, and he had the feeling of a practiced priest, performing a rite that’d been repeated throughout history. Then he saw something long and black in Rosemary's left hand, her eyes opening wide and her expression shifting from agony to one of anger and revenge.

She pulled the snakelike object up from the grass, and Tam realized it had to be the power cable he'd knocked out earlier to darken grounds … a line carrying thousands of volts that would burn through him if its exposed end touched him. He knew it was death, but he was already plunging for her so fast he couldn't stop.

His senses were heightened and warped by the magic of the angel. In his mind, the entire scene locked into one long unfolding instant. He had a final vision of deep darkness flowing as Rosemary's power repelled it from the circle of light. He saw her swinging the cable length slowly like she was casting a spell from some large magic wand - a spell that bound his vision to her thoughts.

Meteors showered in the clearing sky. They spun in brilliant rings above the scene like a great natural power as the electric end of the cable snapped to him.

Then he saw himself through the eyes of the Night Angel - an ugly and twisted man - eyes full of liquid hate as he plunged with a dagger, carrying the evil of death to a beautiful pregnant woman.

He saw the crackling blue charge from the cable touch his arms and send his body flying left of the totem. A blast of flesh-ripping fire roared as he bounced. Hot blood as black as the angel's vials of poison burst from his eye sockets, nose, and lips. His face boiled away, and his clothing and flesh burned off in a camera flash of horror. The force sent him tumbling in the grass like the remains of some blackened voodoo doll, and the winged dagger flew from his hand, carrying some of the charge into an oak tree.

. . . and in death his spirit saw the force of the dagger split the tree trunk . . . the angel wing handle grow and take form as the Night Angel . . . an angel of death and ancient evil. All illusions of the divine vanished, leaving his soul howling into emptiness as the angel's fangs expanded and swallowed him.

As the wheel of fire consumed him and banished him with the angel, he saw a child of the true light emerging from Rosemary's womb, and he heard the sirens of approaching emergency vehicles blaring over the roar of the wind.

--the end—

Houngan World

By Gary Morton

I credit Columbus with discovering this island of Hispaniola, but I also keep in mind that I have discovered new worlds.

Let me take my hat off to the Spanish, who killed one million Arawak Indians, leaving them dead in clouds of flies … a feeding waterfall of flies of the flesh-ripping variety. Then there were the fields of bones, shells, carapaces, skulls of silver and jade, and history that is darkness, ashes, silence, hunger, and void.

Yes, human history is mostly a dark, deformed shadow that is better forgotten, but history suited the man I possessed. Moduka's emptiness of soul was natural, and he was at home in the solitude of the sanctuary as he reached out for voodoo manhood. It's an odd thing to want to find and worship a god when immortality is only hunger. Yet I gave Moduka a god, filled his questing breast, and made the creature fly over barren ground and desert. I taught him the value of higher thoughts and dreams.

When I entered him, I felt the power of my possession. Perspiration and spasms were softening my new flesh, and my jaw kept unhinging, snapping back like it wasn't part of my body at all. There were blinding flashes and icy hands upon me to control my leaping as I was dragged from the sanctuary.

“This is a Loa of power, one next to Baron Samedi, our lord of the dead,” the mamba witch said in Creole ... and hearing her words, the others quickly whitened my face with ashes.

“Here is the greatest of houngans!” The proclamation boomed in my skull like an echo in a cave, and then I found myself staring down at inscriptions in the sand. Some residue of memory remained; I knew of other worlds I had devoured and destroyed, yet it was all vague and dim, as I'm a being who discards yesterdays like excess baggage, keeping only the power.

Finally, they threw the asson at my feet, and the dry rattle of snake vertebrae in the gourd was a transforming sound. I became Moduka, and a full-fledged houngan priest of voodoo.

My mind was a quickly shifting dream. I was a son of the ever-changing spirits. The black skin I'd had all my life suddenly seemed new and amazing. I was proud that my house had a sleek tin roof, walls of healthy wood, and a bed of banana leaves that would always be kept fresh by my servants.

Moduka's future as a houngan was decided at the beginning, when he climbed the treacherous faces of the Ciboa Mountains without the help of man or Loa. To the people of the villages, he was as tall as those cliffs, and the women would fall to their knees and embrace his hips, finding them more beautiful than the blossoms of the bougainvillea vine. It was clear that even if events had followed their natural course, he would have been a man of great power. Moduka was indeed a good choice for possession, and of course, the voodoo made it easy for me to enter without arousing suspicion.

Once initiated, my reputation grew so fast that I was barely established in my church when an agent of the new ton-ton came to test my authority. I was resting on my porch that day, sipping rum while the sun peeled the last of the paint off my bleached railing. My rake-thin and cowardly servant, Hasely, dashed out of the trees to warn me. “Run for your life, Moduka! This man Kapu wears a fresh head on his belt!”

I didn't run. Instead, I struck Hasely a jaw-cracking blow for daring to suggest cowardice.

Kapu was a tall, sinewy man whose natural expression was a zealous sneer. His eyes were bright and reminded me of one of those altar skulls with tiny light bulbs behind the sockets. He wore the head on a scarred and notched belt. It was the head of a white man who had probably been only a visitor in Haiti.

Kapu's sneer slid like oil into a grin as he unclipped the shrunken head and dropped it at my feet.

“I am not impressed by this,” I said. “It is the head of some girlish white boy you backstabbed in Port-au-Prince.”

The insult whitened his lips, as his sneer grew murderous. “This is to show you how to kill,” he said. “The head dried naturally. It is not shrunken through witchcraft. The death was clean, and no illegal black magic was used.”

“My ceremonies have a clean air that your murders don't,” I said.

“Take me to your houmfort!” he said, almost snarling.

I obeyed and found that my own people had fled from me. We came off the path and passed through an empty village. Only birdsong and the cross greeted us at the front of the houmfort.

“I know you don't believe,” I said, “but that doesn't matter - when you pass the cross, you'll be in the spirit land and in my power.”

Kapu spat and swore in native Haitian. He gave the front of the houmfort, its magic drawings, paintings of a cauldron, and crossed knives, the fiercest stare. A stare I found ridiculous. Then his eyes went to the palm-leaf roof and the mud huts composing the surrounding sanctuaries. Without a doubt, he exuded a vile form of strength, but I still felt that I could crush him with the weight of my shadow alone.

“I feel generous today,” Kapu said. “Otherwise I would go in and break down your altar.”

I said nothing, but the glances we exchanged made it clear he was the one afraid.

“Don't imagine I'm here alone,” Kapu continued. “I have fifty armed men nearby. So here is my command. Hold no ceremonies of evil magic. If we hear the beat of the big assators we'll break you and this village like we would a single drum.”

Again, I said nothing, and Kapu walked away to where his anger could twine and grow behind the safe breath of fifty armed men.

Night fell, and the moon shimmered like the largest bubble in the sea. I sent a servant out, running ahead of a zombie who wore a chain with a razor-sharp machete encased. The message for the people was to be at the houmfort or risk being found in the dark by the zombie. They feared nothing in the world more than the rattle of that chain, and I found that amusing. If voodoo was their nightmare, what would they think if they knew of the Old Ones, who could awaken at any time? And what would they think of my true form, which had already awakened?

Drums and dancing were my preference for the opening of a large ceremony, but with the drummers too frightened to be proper mediums, I decided to loosen everyone up with rum. After pouring the usual water at the bases of the assators and spitting a spray of rum over the drummers, I passed out bottles to the people. Once the liquor flowed, things developed naturally into joyous singing in Creole and native Haitian. Brightly colored scarves began to flash as the dancing began, but my own pose remained stern, and I did nothing other than throw scented bark on the fire. No houngan ever celebrates personally while there is an enemy to be slain.

As the assators thundered into the first stage of possession, I went into the houmfort and sat cross-legged by the central totem. In the flickering red altar light I fashioned a voodoo doll out of grass, rags, mud, and black feathers. When the likeness of Kapu was complete, I paused and listened to the drums boom their way up to a second level of possession.

My flesh horse-shivering in the heat, I went to the altar and took down a bottle marked with a big skull and crossbones. I poured some of it into a calabash and lit the contents with a wooden match. Heavy smoke coiled from it. I said an incantation as I carried it back to the totem. There I fanned the smoke and saw Kapu's face in the wisps. Pouring blood from a bottle, I drenched the doll. No sooner had I finished than I heard the ecstatic screams of the celebrants transform into death cries.

I knew people were being cruelly butchered, but I did nothing except listen as the beat of the assators faltered and slowly died. Then I heard gunshots, the shouting of the raiders, mad cries, and singing. A minute later, the heavy thock of machine guns sounded, and bullets cut through flesh and bone. The final sound was of the remaining drums being smashed.

I felt a whirl of troubling human emotions rising in my alien personality. Smoke shimmies blurred skulls, chains … thunderstones and plastic flowers on the altar moved as the endless desert of space rose in my mind. I was parched and starving, and the blood-soaked doll agitated my thirst - but I have always thirsted for blood, and I grinned as I rose and made my way to the door.

The door creaked open, feeling stone-heavy, and I found the corpse of one of my servants spiked to it. I walked out, and as I expected, Kapu was waiting. He stood flanked by two huge bodyguards, and he was smiling, taking much pleasure in the pain he was sure I was hiding. As we faced off, possessed worshippers continued their dance; some with wounded arms but still frenzied … they were gore-speckled, shaking out small tongues of crimson and violet from machete gashes. Their clothes were blood-drenched rags and, like voodoo, in bright colors. The scene was tinged with a hellish magic, and the sight of the massacred dying in ecstasy did more to unnerve Kapu and his men than it did me. Perhaps Kapu noticed something deeper in the moonlight. Beads of blood bright as gems may have shaped a death mask only he could see. Whatever it was, it caused Kapu's heart to visibly sink.

I pulled up the voodoo doll like a magician might pull up a rabbit from a hat, and the entire scene momentarily froze, a tableau of death. Kapu's eyes came to life like rays of moonlight reflecting on a turbulent sea. He gestured, and a guard to his right took aim at my head with a Russian assault rifle.

Kapu laughed hollowly. “A voodoo doll can't save you.”

I let my face relax to its normal, serious expression and pulled a thorn from my hip pocket.

“Kill him!” Kapu commanded, and the guard pulled the trigger just as I ripped the thorn into the front of the doll.

The bullets knocked my head off, and it was mostly spattered and crusted around a hole blasted in the door of the houmfort. Yet I remained standing with the torn doll in a locked hand. Viscous black blood oozed up at my neck.

Kapu's grin became the gape of a skull, and the horrified eyes of his men went to him as he moaned. His shirtfront split open, and pale swelling appeared; it was like a mushroom suddenly sprouting on a rotten tree, and it burst, sending a gush of putrefied innards to the dirt.

Terror became as real as chaff on the breeze. Kapu's men were so horrified they stumbled, fell, and crawled as they fled. And flight didn't save them. A thick column of flies bubbled up from the blood on my neck stump, and I remembered other landscapes of death as I swooped in and ripped into the flesh of the enemy.

I have worn many bodies, but as a man, I’ve never been more than an ordinary man. There is no unordinary man. There is delusion; men believe themselves grand, but humans are only flesh and blood. It’s amusing how every human believes itself and the species must survive, and through collective effort reach the stars and higher being. And be the species no more, but something greater.

Nothing needs to ascend from Earth, and even higher alien beings have been devoured by my kind. As Moduka I don't think I’ve ever had any remorse about the end to come.

In voodoo, I would be called a man and his devil, an evil being. But on all worlds, beings are social and aim for an ideal order. Evil is the corruption of that order. I destroy everything. I don’t corrupt... so I'm not a devil; I'm an end of things.

Time for most human beings is the pulse of the drums, a linear trance with each new day filed in neatly behind the last one. For me, one day would be a million windows, each with a scene of Moduka's life, and into them, something new would slip, almost unnoticed. A startling occurrence might be a multiple vision in the faceted eyes of a fly in my mind. I would dance in the smoke of the fires while a wheel of the human world spun around me. Haiti, I saw through a jumble of perspectives.

I always see much more than the immediate landscape; visions sliding at the edge of my awareness … the red flowers of the flame tree, tides retreating and leaving a wake of froth, flocks of scarlet ibis rising into the blazing sun, the matchbox houses of Haiti from the eye of a hurricane, the possessed dancing on hot coals, and lightning tearing across my boyhood in the Ciboa mountains. Yet I still have the eyes of an Old One, and the only thing absolutely real is the black void.

I became known as Calfou, ruler of the crossroads, an ash-whitened face to be feared, and with my reputation unchallenged, I spent much time in the sanctuary. If I emerged and burned a single candle in silence, there would be a whole night of flying shadows and drumming as the possessed danced off the intoxication of that candle. It was said that if you looked into my eyes in firelight, you would see hell, and many came to see hell. It was at the end of those tumbled-together days, at the end of roads alive with madmen, that I found my own end and prepared a final ceremony.

Of all the madmen, there was a voodoo king of madmen. His name was James, apparently because his parents had been in a colony with Christian missionaries. Corrupted Christianity is a current, along with African spiritualism in voodoo, but the Christian cross and the voodoo cross are different things. James' cross was pure African voodoo; he was a bokor magician who used coffins and the souls of the dead. A huge man, he had a thick build like a Samoan, and a mocking grin filled with secrets. His thoughts were black-magic madness, twisted as lightning and mandrake roots. His jet-black skin was webbed with white scars from a time when he'd nearly been crushed by the clawing bodies of the risen dead. As a boy in the Ciboa Mountains, I'd known of him and feared him. Whenever he came to mind, the first image would be of him standing on an outcropping of rock, raging at the approaching hurricane. I hadn't seen him since boyhood and was still in awe of him.

It wasn't news to me when a servant dashed out of the palms and collapsed at my feet to tell me that Bokor James was on his way from the mountains, pulling a massive coffin mounted on huge handmade wooden wheels. It wasn't news because I had willed the day. With folded arms, I listened as the servant, shaking with malarial fever, told how James was approaching with Shango thunder preceding him and angry legions of dead souls at his heels.

Before James arrived, an anxious multitude had gathered around the houmfort. Strange thunder and hoofbeats set the crowd on edge, and when James appeared under the darkened sky, a calm-before-the-storm silence fell. James strained, powerful as an ox against the harness and ropes, pulling the massive coffin on as the people wilted out of his way like dying grass. It was as if a corpse of stone was contained within, a soul as solid as the core of the earth.

A possession of Loas began with the banging of a single drum, and when James halted before me, the land suddenly came alive with frenzy and thundering drums.

No words were spoken as I faced off with James, and the celebration had become much too loud for words. His eyes were as I remembered them. You could shriek all the way down to the bottom of them. Turning, I led the way into the houmfort and to the door of a special sanctuary. James followed, an ashen-faced monster on my heels.

A statue-still zombie with hair like a mat of rotted vines, and wearing a conch horn, guarded the door. He stepped aside, and we entered a room with walls of mystic paintings and guttering candles. Numerous sealed pots containing the breath of initiates and decorated with black-and-white crosses were spilled over the earthen floor. A zombie entered carrying a smoking basket. Trance came upon me, and I saw my real body and the ruins of decadent civilizations I had destroyed - magnificent temples, blood-red suns, myriad beings involved in final copulation. A million cells like jeweled facets opened my mind to visions of marvelous complexity. The chain of my existence was a trail of microscopic spores, glittering in swirls through the solar winds of the Milky Way.

I became lost in visions and writhed on the floor, yet I still heard the bokor's resonant voice as he made his incantations to the dead. Earth appeared again, a speck in my eye, and we were spirits moving outside among the people. The many faces seemed doll-like and unreal in their twisted ecstasy. It was a dance of painted marionettes, and the wicked screams and laughter belonged to devils that couldn't die. Like flames, they had no choice but to dance and celebrate the power of doom.

With the bokor I faced the coffin, and it pulsed with the light of some tremendous burning. Drumbeats were rumbling in the earth as James stepped up and unfastened the latch. A radiance that stirred sheer terror could be seen at the crack of the lid, and it blazed on James' flesh, turning his body to glistening ebony. Fire and light were a mask on his face, and he threw his arms wide to the people and laughed hard enough to shake a house. Grinning wildly, he seized the lid and threw it open, and then he gave it a powerful shove and sent it rolling on its big wheels into the dancers.

It rolled like thunder, throwing people out of its path in waves, and from the brilliant interior darkness rose. It was a beast, a horned giant, and it roared like an inferno and hissed like doused embers, then it exploded into clouds of winged insects. They were like flies or grasshoppers, yet they were as beautiful as jewels with breasts of brass and beaks of razor-sharp crystal.

My head swam in their beauty, and my spirit was the shimmering cloud they made; knowing the time of transcendence had arrived, I tossed up powder from a gourd, made smoke, and became a shadow rising in the sky.

Time has passed, and now I look down at hills of gathered bones and a buzzing glitter of insects. I am the spirit of the houngan world, and I am the beast of old watching the winds strengthen. Time flashes by, and I see it as flesh ripped from the carcass. The future is clear in the bleak sky. Tomorrow, the sunrise will peak on a volcano in Haiti, and more flies will hatch from the mountains of corpses. Black as tons of ashes, they'll ride the winds above the Ciboa Mountains. And I will be them, the winged plague of the end.

--the end--

A Survivalist's Notebook

By Gary Morton

Doug gave the rising brow of the storm a stern glance and plodded on in the biting wind. His genetically thickened legs and toughened mutant skin were necessary for his survival in this blustery part of northern Canada. Other men with lesser powers would've already been blown away, thrown like straw into the void of wilderness. And it felt cold - Arctic cold, with temperatures dropping down the scale like they did a century ago.

He couldn't turn back as flash floods raced in the south and forest fires raged to the east. The west existed as a bizarre swampland leading up to inhospitable mountains he didn't want to think about. There wasn't any place where he could hide from the roar of an angry earth. He always ended up on the edge of the storm. And this time it meant moving north.

Doug tightened his bitter lips against the settling frost and grim day. He imagined himself lucky in that his intelligence hadn't been greatly enhanced. Not having the ability to calculate all of the odds against him seemed a blessing.

Three hours more of steady walking brought him to a long rise and a banked depression partially sheltered from the wind. Looking ahead, he saw endless chunks of ice and colored stone sprinkled across exposed tundra. A large part of a flash glacier had melted here, and due to his view of the last peak, he knew that this weird spread of land stretched on for several kilometers.

He'd seen a huge log structure near the top but couldn't spot it now against the dark background of clouds. They rolled up like smoke in the howling wind, creating ferocious effects that would make demons and giants seek shelter.

As he began the climb, he studied the ground at his feet, amazed at the things poking out of the strange tundra; polluted glacial ice that had stubbornly remained buried it for ages, and it seemed unfair that such a find would be uncovered only when few humans were left to study it or even reach it.

Shells of extinct sea creatures, lizard skeletons, preserved feathers - strange greenery and ferns sprouted here and there from ancient seeds. In places, the tundra ran like seaweed in rounded rocks, forming faces as it rippled in the wind. An unknown Eden of the north was here and emerging from the ice … a place that had never been mentioned in legends, holy books, or even imagined.

Near the top, he looked up and spotted the structure a couple of hundred feet away. A cabin built of huge petrified gray logs that had been pulled from the glacier's bottom. Stretched around the slope in a V shape, it was more than a single cabin, and he supposed it had been put together that way to provide maximum cover from the ceaseless blow.

Doug had to turn into the open wind to get to the door, and from there he caught a glimpse of the other slope and the unusual forest covering it. Squat trees bit into the ground. Their branches trembled like tentacles. Some had gnarled limbs covered with large black cones, and others sported huge needles nearly wide enough to be leaves. Climbing roots wound in the rotted carpeting, and in places, they sat on soil and tundra that looked like quicksand. Boughs arched overhead and coiled where the trees were dense, creating a dim and partially sheltered world below. Strange lighting tinted pools of icy water, and as a whole, the place seemed like a tiny forest world in microcosm - an ancient hideaway that had been uncovered after ages of burial and was sprouting again.

The heavy door was open and banging in the wind. Doug stepped into the dark interior, thinking that perhaps it'd been open in the blow for years. As far as anyone knew, there were no outdoor survivors up in this part of the world.

A brief look told him the place was about as solid as a vault. He forced the door shut, drew the sturdy bolt, and found himself in darkness for a moment before pulling his ball lantern from his pack.

It detected the dark room and brightened. Shadows swept across the walls as the room lit up, and what he saw was Spartan to say the least. Simple tables and chairs had been fashioned from a grainy sort of pinewood. There were a few crude tools and an old Remington rifle on the back wall. A heavy chest stood bolted to the floor near the center table, so he stepped over and opened it, finding a dog-eared handwritten notebook and nothing else inside.

Doug was exhausted and cold. The cabin had a small fireplace, but he rarely used fire. He took the notebook and a blanket, sat down on a heavy chair, and began to read, feeling relaxation settle in as the first words flowed into his mind.

Welcome, mutant son of man.

My name is Joe London, and since I'm the last survivor hereabouts, you can call this my survivalist's notebook.

I lived as a gambling man in a world that gambled its life away; another roll of the dice and everything might've come up right. But there is no second roll of the big dice, so we got snake eyes and a dead world in fate's toss.

Men always were thieves and robbers; most of us worked to destroy nature. There were a few higher tribal cultures that coexisted, and perhaps history could've rolled one of those into dominance. Instead, the axes kept coming up every time, and we cut down the world. We talked of new worlds and planets while we murdered and poisoned the species and systems on our own. Like cowards, most of us robbed the people of the future, talking grand and never considering that they couldn't fight back. They could only be our victims.

Welcome to my cabin, fellow predator. You like the gun-slit window?

I'm always amazed when I consider how people from seventy years back could've turned nature into a raging bull today - and put the undeserving and unborn on the receiving end of the sucker punches and hurricanes. Keep in mind that I wasn't one of the stupid ones, though.

Remember the old gasoline engine? I was a top official in one of the key auto companies of the day. My job was to know it and, in the end, keep it secret. We could have switched to solar, hydrogen, electric, and other engines, but we didn't because we didn't want to spend the money retooling the plants. We believed in an ever-rising economy, and it rose to the top and choked the world in its gases and hidden environmental horrors.

We did nothing as the ice cap melted, or should I say that what we did was get China to embrace a policy of a car per person to make sure the entire world would choke on greenhouse gases.

I spoke out on the issue at about the time the meteorological system began to collapse. Making a public statement to the effect that the planet was destined to become hell - a place more like Hades than Earth. We had taken the Biblical Armageddon and turned it into Thermageddon - an ecological catastrophe on a biblical scale. And despite what was clearly happening to us, corporations and governments were continuing to encourage air pollution, nuclear waste, burning, over-fishing, clear-cutting, strip-mining, super dams, excessive drainage, paving of wild lands, dumping, and a population explosion.

As it was happening, the visionaries were preaching our survival as though we were living on another planet. The technologies they plugged, like terraforming, nanotechnology, genetically enhanced food and humans, tinkering with the atmosphere, and so on, were to be the miracles to ensure our survival - not on Mars, but here on Earth.

And what it really added up to was another grand dream of the robbers. The reality being waves of nightmarish weather sweeping the world. Our biosphere undergoing a complete transformation. The Arctic ice cap melted fast, yet they were still telling people that ice that was long gone still existed up here. The planet's temperatures soared because the huge sink of dark water absorbed heat from the sun, while the shield of ice used to reflect heat into space.

Rising tides swept in like oily giants to drown places like Florida. Overpopulation and burning killed the Amazon rainforest. Salmon disappeared from the Pacific Ocean - food grew scarce as the world's population exploded. The last of the coral reefs were winking out. The Everglades were drowned. The Gulf Stream switched off. Parts of the world, like Texas were becoming total deserts. Super-hurricanes, category 6 tornadoes, and floods became regular news, along with forest fires and droughts. All of it creating billions of environmental refugees in a world already composed of billions of poverty-stricken people. It didn't take much more to kill off their meager food supply. The reek of the dying billions in torched cities replaced the stench of dying marine life and forests in the end. And even then, we thought we would be safe in North America.

But we weren't, and for a last blow, the great stores of Arctic methane got released through melting and severe atmospheric feedback loops locked in, leading to a runaway greenhouse effect. The combination of biotic impoverishment, rising air and sea temperatures, the crumbling ozone shield, an altered planetary skin, and the accumulation of carbon dioxide finally tipped the balance and put an end to life as we knew it.

We couldn't act to save ourselves as corporations had turned our world institutions into tools of profit and suppression. Speculators were largely in control, and governments geared to Band-Aid solutions couldn't act in a fast-rising crisis.

As things collapsed, those who'd profited from bringing about our death adapted and profited from death and the industry of extermination itself. But I was on the outside then and I'd been there for a long time.

Shortly after my conversion to environmental causes, I became unemployable and eventually an outlaw survivalist - a transformation that happened in degrees. The old feature films used to display wonderful heroes, and they conquered all. In real life, there is no such animal. When I lost my financial means through speaking out, it led to a run on my assets and then divorce. Even my two sons abandoned me as a lost cause. Family breakup of some sort happened to nearly everyone in the end.

It happened to me early, and that was important - a personal catastrophe long before the end came. It led to my survival in the long term. In the early days, I nearly vanished from the face of the Earth, drifting about Canada as a homeless man. During that time, I slowly made connections and built an underground survival network. Of course, there were thousands of survival networks later, but they were all high-profile while we remained invisible. Our group never made a public statement or kept open addresses of leaders and camps. If we had done so, we would have died as the others did - attacked first by the desperate masses and then by the forces of the 2nd World Order Government.

The so-called Global Village lost its true global nature when the fast transport of goods and people ended. Once that went to hell, everyone other than military organizations got isolated in various pockets of the raging world storm. We could still get news from around the world, but the technological means to do non-military things at an international and national level were nearly gone.

My group managed to gather in an area of Northern Ontario and duck much of the disaster. A year after we dug, Canadian cities began to collapse. Our two hundred members were still quietly camouflaging structures in deep forest, and when we'd set up our forest network completely, I found myself foolishly unhappy. My sons were grown, and I wanted to see them one last time before the end came for them.

I left on my own, telling the others at camp that it was just a scouting mission. A few of the toothless and bearded looked at me with suspicion, but they didn't oppose me.

Following established trails, I began the journey. Emerging from cool pine forests in the North, I entered heavy mixed forest on the long run down to the moraine that borders the City of Toronto. This was rough going as years of high winds had blocked roads and created a jungle of deadwood and stumps. The older forest was strewn with enormous fallen logs; rising temperatures seemed to have spurred the growth of deciduous trees, undergrowth, and vines. The tougher customers of nature were surviving while the weak died. Bears were plentiful, feeding on a rough genetic version of carp surviving in the shrinking waters with the tinier plant fish they ate. The angry roars of the bears often spooked me.

When the forest got too dense or dangerous, I worked my way down, following the shores of small glacial lakes. A reek of dead fish rose on these shores as some species were dying in the warmer water. But there was no shortage of food as I could see schools of fish swimming in the clear flow and was able to catch fat sunfish with my bare hands.

Before reaching the moraine, I stumbled onto a huge abandoned farming complex. A rich, moth-fluttering meadow suddenly ended at endless fields of scorched earth, stubble, and lumpy clay. Empty observation towers told me it had been an experimental farm.

Land that's been burned off quickly rises with new growth, and this area was dead, so my guess was that mutant crops had been grown; the sort of stuff that is genetically programmed not to seed, because if it did, it would spread and choke all other plant life. It looked like the government had failed here in one of its attempts to feed the population with new storm-resistant crops - the result being a strip of odd desert in Canada.

I avoided main roads and towns. Beyond the dead lands, I followed a long, winding valley, walking down the mostly overgrown track bed of a freight line. Rail transport had been another victim of the weather, mostly wind and flooding. This trek took me to another survivalist settlement - large and obvious. The camp had been constructed out of old rail cars dumped along the valley and converted to storage sheds and housing.

The first person I encountered was a skeleton. He rested in the parched weeds outside one of the bigger rail cars. The tattered remains of his clothing fluttered in the breeze, and his bones were clean, indicating death had taken him quite a while ago. Inside the car, I found little other than darkness, cobwebs, and empty food tins.

Moving on, I found many more skeletons in random locations. It was like death had come suddenly, and no one had lived to struggle and clean up later. A white powder like lime sprinkled the ground near the bones at the shore of a pond. Nearby, I found spent canisters of some sort of chemical. In the central section, many rail cars had been huddled together into a sort of shantytown, and there were a lot of skeletons and more of the canisters. Some bore the 2nd World Order marking, and from them I got the picture of what had happened - a chemical weapons attack. 2WO had been created out of the remains of NATO, and it was a ruthless military outfit involved in survival through sheer power and the genetic mutation of humans, animals, and plant life. A decision had been made by that organization to exterminate this survival group with chemical bombs. It meant 2WO had planned to resettle this land.

Sunset fell with great brilliance that day. I remember sitting out front of one of the tilted rail cars, nibbling on my rations. The dead grinned back at me as long beams swept the land, and I decided to enter Toronto under the cover of darkness. My people knew from underground radio transmissions that most of the other survivalist groups in the countryside had been done in, and the last of the survivors were being herded into the cities by the government. The herding was supposed to make food rationing easier by concentrating most of the survivors, but I didn't believe that story, as I've never trusted the government.

My son was in the city center; I knew that. My guess was that he would know the real reason for concentrating people in the cities. One possibility was segregation. Word on the grapevine was that 2WO planned to populate the countryside with the hardier mutant breeds of man. Perhaps those of old mankind would be kept and fed like weak sheep in the cities. It would make it easier to control them and their birth rate - if nature wasn't already doing the job well enough.

Fearing the highways and arrest, I entered Toronto following the half-rusted rails. It seemed incredibly dark on the edge of the city. Occasionally, the moon slipped out of the clouds and revealed blocks of vacant suburban houses and scarred high-rises. Weeds and maples had overgrown much of this property, creating a densely forested city.

The night wind seemed inhumanly hot. It riffled the boughs like they were a dry musical instrument, and added to that sound were eerie howls and bangs from the gusts swinging down the empty streets and through the hollow buildings below.

Near the central city, I began to spot military vehicles and pedestrians, but I stayed out of sight, not wanting to be seen until I was well inside, where I wouldn't immediately be asked to identify myself. I had no idea what would happen if I were arrested, and didn't want to find out.

Coming out of a long ravine trail, I cut through the shadows in Summerhill Park and walked out on Sumac Road, heading down the lit street to my son's apartment building. This part of the city was still populated, and a few people loitered in front of the buildings. The buzzers didn't work, but the door stood open, so I went up to the fourth floor and knocked. I didn't get an answer; instead, a pretty woman of Oriental extraction opened the door of the apartment next door.

I stepped over and asked her if Jimmy London was still around.

“No. That guy went with the military to one of the domes. He said he was signed on to work for them in data skills, so it's likely a high-access dome.”

“Domes? What are they?”

“Since the earthquake, they've been moving people from damaged areas to the central domes. Now they take people from undamaged areas, too. They are a racist or ignorant sort of thing, and go in order of importance. Most people don't want to go there, but there isn't anywhere else to go.”

“I see,” I said, thanking her before I left.

Out front, I questioned two thin black men smoking rolled cigarettes beside a battered newspaper box. “I need information from the military. Do you know where the nearest station is?”

One guy took a drag and puffed out smoke. The lit end highlighted his lumpy nose. “The stations are mostly mobile. And you don't want to find them unless you're planning on disappearing.”

“Disappearing, what do you mean?”

“The domes, my friend. People who go there never come back. Rumors are that some of the big trucks headed out of town are loaded with people being taken off to work as slaves for the mutants.”

“It doesn't sound good. But I've got nowhere else to go, and I'm looking for my son.”

“That's the story everywhere.”

As I turned away, I saw pity in his eyes. With little to do, I took a late-night walk on some of the main streets. The lamps and some of the building lights were on, and people milled about here and there in front of buildings that had stood up against the quake. A semblance of order existed, and I saw no real threat of crime. Litter and dust flew in the warm wind rushing out of cracked alleys, and I could see fast-rolling clouds on the skyline. Toronto was actually one of the safest places in the world; most of the damage had been done by one devastating earthquake and a hurricane that hit shortly after.

Of course, there were other facets of the nightmare. When the food distribution systems collapsed, the cities were the first places in chaos. The initial wave of crime and death had been tidal, but it did subside, and things came back together. Now it was a bit easier to survive in city centers than in the countryside. Small survivalist groups could vanish in the city jungle, while in the countryside, they were open to attack. If we hadn't been so far north, we wouldn't have had a chance against other groups and forces of law and order bent on destroying every outlaw organization.

I drifted deeper downtown on Dundas Street, and I finally came upon a military checkpoint. Metal barricades blocked further passage on the street, and I could see through to a huge dome rising in the dark. It was immense, like a stadium the size of a city block.

Ten heavily armed guards at a post and an armored personnel carrier held the point. There weren't any citizens trying to pass late at night. In order to see my son, I had no choice but to chance talking to them. After ditching my hidden weapon in an alley waste bin, I approached them.

Cool air drifted from the checkpoint window. The guard staring out at me was unshaven, with mutant light green skin.

“What do you want?” he said gruffly.

“I've been living in my son's apartment, thinking he would return. Now a neighbor tells me my son is working with the military in one of the higher security domes. I want to know if there's any way I can visit him?”

“You got identification or a chip implant?”

“None. But he can identify me if he sees me.”

“Not good. You'll have to give us his name and your name. We're going to hold you until we verify your identity. Any objections to that?”

“No objections.”

They held me in a jail cell for three days. The window allowed a view of the street, and I could see the military personnel entering another large checkpoint near the dome. Some men had small Canadian flags on their uniforms, and sprinkled among them were many boy soldiers with greenish faces and 2WO outfits. Without a doubt, the old NATO wing of 2WO had bred a huge army of mutants that were presently reaching the ages of 16 to 18. Their youth was apparent in their faces, yet their bodies were well developed - stocky and strong like those of older, hardened men. Since the troops were mixed, I got the notion that the mutants were to be integrated with the general population.

When Jimmy was ready to see me, they had me hauled into the dome. Two burly mutant soldiers were my escorts, and they took me down a long passage lined with windows giving a one-way view of the ragged crowd milling in an open concourse below.

We arrived and found Jimmy waiting outside his office door. My son was large, healthy, and rugged - not at all like the other shattered men of the period. His dark hair seemed to be getting thicker and wavier with age, and his brown eyes were intense and youthful. He also had perfect teeth, which was rare. It surprised me that he looked so good in a military outfit, as he had been an electronics engineer and not a military person.

He greeted me with a strong embrace and led me into his office. A wave of happiness consumed me at that point. I felt that my son finally believed in me. Then I noticed the combination NATO/2WO insignia on his shoulder, and my joy began to evaporate.

Jimmy sat on the edge of his desk while I took a chair.

“I guess you want to know what happened to Mom and Dave.”

I nodded.

“They're gone. They survived the worst of it only to die two months ago from a pandemic virus that hit the city. I saw to their burial. They're in the cemetery off York Side Road in the old neighborhood.”

“That's more than sad. But I suppose I'm lucky just to find you alive.”

“I made it, but it wasn't easy. Believe me, it surprised me when they came saying you were here. I thought it was an impostor. You were part of the survivalist movement - they're all dead now. You must be just about the last one.”

“I am the last. On the way into the city, I found a lot of corpses. 2WO and not outlaws killed them. They were just pockets of people trying to survive on their own little pieces of ground. What's 2WO's reason for such atrocities?”

“Panic and resettlement are the likely reasons. The Canadian Government and 2WO feared the survivalists would band together and form a guerrilla army in the countryside. I think the attacks were based on paranoia over something that never would have happened. Then there is resettlement. The people in these domes are going to be moved onto that land. Soldiers are hard to control now, as there is no oversight.”

“Something big is happening here, isn't it?”

“Yes. That's the reason I waited so long before seeing you. What I have to explain is very delicate and hard to accept.”

“Nothing surprises me these days. We are accepting things we wouldn't have accepted before. So don't worry too much about it.”

“True. The environment has changed totally. 2WO leaders have realized that man and society also have to transform themselves completely. Mutants like the guards who brought you in are one of the ways of the future.”

“Ah, I see. So I’m one of the old boys now, and flawed mankind is on the way out. But I’m a mutant too in a way. I’ve learned to survive in ways even mutants can't. Perhaps they could learn from me.”

“It’s changed, but not that much. You can see how strong I am. It’s due to a new kind of gene therapy. I'm one of the few people with the physical makeup to respond to it. My stamina, base intelligence in certain areas, and lifespan have been prolonged.”

“You mean humankind has been recreated as a new master race. I have to admit that I'm impressed, even if it means I'm mostly obsolete.”

Excitement rose in his voice. “It's a new beginning. Only last year, we believed that only the mutants would survive over the long term. Now a miracle has happened. Mankind will live on in a slightly enhanced form. Two master races - mutant and man will live side by side in a newly harmonized world environment. The days of man the predator will end; we'll govern nature itself and survive on this planet and others.”

“I don't quite understand how enhanced humans are different from the mutants?”

“You wouldn't. Mutants look quite human, but they are very different on the genetic level. NATO's world project in that area dates back years. When it was restructured, it became a secret military organization. Most of the old reports of aliens had to do with the first mutants. When the world started to get hot, they accelerated the process and bred a small army of them.”

“If full mutants are that different, then it's likely that they won't have any place in their world for people like me.”

“No need to worry. You can live on in a comfortable retirement. In fact, I've already put your application through. There's no need for you to meet the same fate as the others.”

“Are you saying that the others are being eliminated?”

“Sorry. I didn't mean to let that slip. I guess I have to tell you sooner or later. You may hate us for this, but simply put, most of those in the domes won't live on. Only those who respond to the gene therapy and some of their immediate family members will.”

“And the rest?”

“They think they are leaving to work on farms. But they never get there. Be assured that it isn't a painful end. The transports are set up to gas them and put them to sleep instantly at the cemeteries. Unfortunately, I'm one of the people making the life and death decisions.”

“God help you, if He still exists!”

“Our reasons aren't cruelty or fascism. We have a dream and a goal. Just as you saw the end coming long ago, we see a new beginning. Yet this new world can't work if the old race breeds and damages the environment again. We are doing it in a way that seems cowardly. Yet it is because we knew from the outset that few people would believe in us or in the truth, just as few people believed in you when you warned them of the end and later gained your abilities to survive.”

“Yes. They wouldn't listen, and now they've earned this. It's a horrible end and appalling to me, but I understand it. Outrage and clinging to the old ways won't in any way change things. I can only hope to see the curtain of horror lift and the new people entering a humane future. I hid for a long time, but I knew I would return to a world that had changed. If you and your people can make that change for the better, I can't disagree.”

Jimmy nodded, and I sighed. I could see that my apparent acceptance of 2WO and their politics of doom had moved him on a deep emotional level. Despite his health, he had thumbprints of guilt bagging his eyes, and up close, I detected a haunted look. I saw that look soften to relief as I said a few more resigned words. Then we ended up talking about other things - memories of family life long ago, when the world was a better place … when my wife and children were beautiful. I embraced him and departed, holding a ticket granting me a small apartment in one of the domes. Sometime in the future, I was to be resettled with Jimmy, being allowed to live on in retirement until I died. There would be no attempt to apply gene therapy to me. Jimmy knew I wouldn't want it that way.

Jimmy knew a lot. His great intelligence had been enhanced to the top. Yet he'd failed to detect my lies. He wasn't a cop. I did not intend to accept his new world. It gave me visions of a future that would continue into a new realm of the vile and decrepit. Mutants and genetically enhanced humans would be at war. It was certain because man had not ceased being a predator – greenish monsters exterminating the old race, or an improved version of it could only be worse than it. And that was certain when the enhancements were only for survival and targeted to certain forms of intelligence.

Meeting Jimmy really did establish me as one of the greatest of the survivalists. No other father could have faked his way through that interview. Swimming through quicksand would be easier. Emotions and inner pain would've choked them all. Their reactions would've drawn in the 2WO guards - and then they'd have been put to death with the rest.

I'd suffered before. My family abandoned me years back. This second time around with my son, it hurt even more. But I knew that the world was at a dead end and that loss and desperate emotions were a big part of it. If my son could abandon humanity, I could abandon him. We all die one day, and the best is if it's physical and not spiritual.

Two days later, I escaped the dome and headed out of the city on the same route I entered. Armored helicopters buzzed the trees at the edge of town, but I managed to keep out of sight and work my way north. At the camp of skeletons, I stopped and picked up a rifle and ammunition and was leaving on the rail bed when three 2WO mutants emerged from the pines to confront me.

These were soldiers with thick green skin, heavy armor, laser weapons, and high-speed Glock guns, much more deadly than my own rifle. One of them called for my surrender, and I responded by swinging the rifle off my shoulder and firing. The shot bypassed body armor and got the center mutant - the leader - in his throat. Blood spurted grotesquely as he fell, and this frightened the others enough that they ducked back.

They could have drawn and finished me if they were experienced. The window of a couple of seconds their fear created allowed me to roll down the bank and break for the trees. I burst through sumac and into the pines, seeing lasers rip up the branches all around me.

From there, it became a stalking game - kill or be killed. Cold-force laser beams and thick DUSB rapid-fire bullets saturated the forest around me with fire, splinters, and destruction, and for about five minutes, I remained behind a monster fallen tree trunk. When I moved, I ran fast. I could hear them crashing through the brush to the giant pines, so I made a dash through the mist toward a shadowy path and worked my way down a slight incline to heavier forest. I found a large granite boulder partially curtained by vines, got behind it, and listened.

They came down the soft slope with the cunning of foxes. I heard them whispering and touching supposedly silent communication devices as they approached, and then they split up - one mutant heading past me while the other veered off to the north.

Keeping my breathing silent, I let the first mutant pass. He poked around in the thorn bushes near another boulder, then he went through the trees toward a tiny clearing. A misplaced shot would be the end of me, so I didn't fire on him. Instead, I crept up behind him and got behind an oak. He looked into the clearing, then turned back, and when he passed, I stepped out and planted my hunting knife in his back.

The soft forest duff and sprouting greenery muted his fall. And I simply turned and hurried through the clearing. I kept moving at a near run for a couple of kilometers, then I fell winded on the bank of a stream. Fortunately, I didn't encounter the third mutant. About two hours later, I saw a camouflaged helicopter pass quietly and circle to head south. It was returning to their base to report.

Dense forest became my accomplice as I moved north. Sometimes the helicopters passed, but they failed to spot me as I could use the wildlife as camouflage. I never moved in open areas where their sensors would get solid detection on my body. I trudged through brush and thick forest where flies could kill the average man in a single afternoon. A few days later, nightmare storms moved in and grounded all aircraft, making it possible for me to move on in quick rushes when the winds and rains left quiet pockets.

Near home base, I came upon a mutant military encampment. There were hundreds of them dug in with special tents, and they had several all-terrain vehicles. Surveillance told me what I'd suspected - these soldiers didn't keep prisoners. The dead they abandoned as food for the hungry animals and the storms. At night, I moved in, disabled their fencing and sensors, and stole some of their rations. Circling back, I took a longer route home.

Gunshots and artillery fire echoed in the woods as I approached home base, so I halted and did some poking around. I crawled on my belly to a cabin on the perimeter and burst in the door with my rifle at the ready. Bodies littered the floor inside. They were gore-spattered and riddled with bullets. All of them were friends of mine, and after seeing the blue face of Jack Bonner, one of our best fighters, I knew it was over for my people. My last home would be gone in a few days.

The urge to shoot it out and die rose in my blood. For a long time, I sat under a tree, cradling my head in my hands. Perhaps too long, as blue smoke was drifting in, and I was in danger of being found.

It would've been over for me then. But as I looked up at the haze of sun in the treetops, an inner voice spoke, telling me to move on and survive. And I did just that.

A power far removed from survival instinct drew me north. During that journey, a distant sun often broke through the brow of angry clouds and glared down at me like the evil eye of some underworld god. Reaching the shore of Hudson Bay, a good piece up on the west side, I walked on in a hypnotized state while bear-paw gusts from a gale shattered nearby trees. Nature brought up the rear, striking against the mutant and human enemy with its own artillery blasts, yet I felt nothing and drifted forward with the wind at my back, following the rippling grasses and waters.

Sometimes I crashed through brush like a crazed moose and barely noticed fly bites and the lashing of branches and thorns on my skin. On the cloudiest days, my head would clear, and I would set up camp and do some fishing or hunting. Even then, I did little thinking on the human race and what had become of it. I was more like an ancient hunter, content to eat his meat.

It was a bleak world, devoid of mutants and the new humankind and their guns and calculated future. I existed alone, looking out of eyes blackened by the rings marking an evil time. I had no use for society, and it was a good thing to be in the wild.

My arrival at a new slope had biblical overtones. A huge flood subsided before me, and I moved with agility through a swamped forest. Spooked wildlife fled in all directions in these deadly woods, escaping ghosts of the deluge. Higher dry land brought me to a hilltop, and from there I looked down at the slope and the ancient forest sprouting in the glacial melt.

The pale sun glowed with mystic light and sent beams streaming down. Chunks of ice glittered like scattered gems, and the whole scene took on a divine aspect like I was looking back into the beginning of time.

Days later, when I'd done a detailed study of the uncovered bones, minerals, and plant specimens, I knew that I really was looking back through millions of years.

A dense forest rose in the center, and when I descended into it, tall weeds in open areas made me feel lost in a maze of unknown proportions. Deep in the twisted trees, I found a small clearing. Petrified logs were heaped there beside a glacial brook, and I decided to use them to construct a cabin. It would be hard work for one man, and the job relied on survivalist skills I had learned long ago. I could see that a river had carried the logs to this spot, and then over time, they'd been buried in ice.

While perched on the logs, I thought about what I would construct. Over the next few days, I cut a path and began to toil like Sisyphus, using a slow technique of vines, small logs, stones, and levers to roll the big logs up the hill. Once there, I notched them and fitted them according to my plan. Two months passed as I did this work; I grew dirty and callused and must have looked like a wild man. I also felt watched and often looked back to the forest, seeing nothing but fleeting shadows, rustling boughs, and ferns.

It seemed impossible, but I finished the cabin, and once inside, I had plenty of time to rest and stare out the gun-slit window. I found that I really was being watched, as it was then that the others came, and by others, don't assume that I mean other survivalists or mutant soldiers. These others were creatures emerging from hibernation of some unknown variety.

When I first spotted them, the sunset rays were brightening the trees and creating glare. From a distance, the creatures resembled strange apes. They continued to move in the long shadows below as twilight softened the sky. Near dark, they began to walk up the slope, and I seemed to wake - the strange calm lifting and my scalp tightening with fear. I did have a rifle, but for some reason it didn’t occur to me to arm myself against them.

As they drew closer, I noticed that their fur was patterned and matted - a mathematical or puzzle-like effect. A key symbol stood out on their chests. Belts of fur covered their genitals. Light seemed to emit rather than reflect from the round eyes of these creatures. A glow of darkness edged them, forming an aura of biological energy I'd never seen before.

They shuffled up and passed the window, and their strange eyes glowed in at me, imparting an instinctual knowledge of their being into my mind. I became aware of them as natural creatures and not man-made mutants. Other thoughts passing in my head were unexplainable, existing in a blur beyond my comprehension. I ended up gaping and drooling like an epileptic as they moved near the window.

My head cleared when they left. I opened the door to look as they were fading into the twilight … disappearing in the clawed roots of the ancient trees.

In the night, they returned to haunt me in dreams. Feeling incredibly light, I dream-walked out into a forest salted by faint rays; ferns brushed me as I passed through to the clearing, and once there, they emerged from crooked trees and surrounded me.

They spoke to me telepathically, using inner voices that reminded me of the speech of beautiful children. Images of understanding rose in my mind as they told me the end had come - that all humankind and mutants would perish as they had perished.

I knew they lacked hostile intentions; they were the messengers of some nameless other. A being that granted awareness of its existence but not clarity as to what it was in reality.

Long before the birth of man, these creatures had ruled on Earth. Like us, they'd abused nature and earned extinction. The Other had destroyed them and buried them; not a trace was left for man to find in his new beginning.

Yet the Other did not forget its mistakes; nature itself existed as this being's memory. Some of the creatures had remained and lived in a bubble at the bottom of the ice. And in the same way, they had chosen me to live on as a memory of mankind.

In the dream, they forced me to reveal secrets I did not want to reveal - that I was a survivalist and that I didn't want to live on as a specimen, that I would kill them if I could.

I awoke with a fever, sweaty and mumbling in my bed. The morning sun was up, and I could hear the faint whistling of the wind in the cracks. Bars of shadow were sweeping over the window, and in my state, I saw ghastly images in them.

Managing to rise, I went to the door and looked out. Fresh air rushed to my nostrils with the power of an oxygen charge. A beautiful day enveloped and uplifted me. I looked up at the racing white clouds, and then I heard voices.

My eyes went to the slope, the forest, and the ferns, and finally settled on some dark patches of quicksand. Heat shimmies rose from the gases bubbling up, and for some reason, I felt drawn to the spot. A powerful force tugged at me, and I started to move ....

Tomorrow morning will come as always, but on a new day in a new world. I’ll hear the creatures calling and walk down the slope and into that quicksand. It will consume me … suck me down to that bottom of all bottoms; down to that great inheritance humankind passed on to me. There I'll exist in the eternal memory of the Other as the last remnant of this world.

We have come to the end, and I am the last son of man. So tell me - is it fair? Should Joe London live on forever in this way? Bearing the weight of mankind and evil?

Yes, you must think it right. You did come here to exterminate me, so it's certain that you won't weep or shed so much as a single tear for me.

Yet if you can't weep for my kind, perhaps you can weep for yourself and your own. Recall that the end has come and that you are doomed as well. The Other will work to fix his mistakes, and he will give the new world to a new life form that deserves it.

So in one sense, the ending here in this notebook at this cabin is your ending. It will be made in your mind. The morning will come, and you too will step out on that slope.

What end awaits you, new mutant sons and daughters of man? Will you be crushed under clouds of doom, or will the voices call and bring you down to quicksand and to me ....

Doug closed the notebook and thought about Joe London. He'd been an admirable person, the hardiest of his kind and a prophet. Joe at least tried to warn the others. The leaders of the old world had few excuses when people like London had clearly told them what would happen. They were criminals, deserving of the death penalty they'd received.

Even London's son had lacked his father's wisdom despite genetic improvements used to raise his intelligence. Like old mankind, altered man and its mutants had failed. Again in human history, arrogant fools herded assumed inferiors to death camps.

Madness of a different sort had taken Joe in the end - visions of creatures and the godlike Other. Now he lay at the bottom of the slope and at the bottom of the quicksand. Joe London remained a symbol of the fate the masters of his kind had prepared for everyone.

In a way, it could be seen as tragic and comic - humorous to a degree. The notebook left Doug with an odd smile on his face as he drifted off to sleep.

Mutants rarely dreamed, and Doug's night passed in an instant. Bright morning sunlight streamed through the window, and his eyes opened. Hunger ached in his belly, so he pulled out a ration square and boiled some hot tea.

Images from the notebook came to mind as he sipped the hot liquid. A quick report on it seemed in order, so he got his handheld out and sent in a quick message on the find.

Half an hour later, he received new instructions from 2WO. They wanted him to search the slope and forest to verify that London really had died. Samples and photos would also be in order.

“This is going to be great,” Doug thought as he walked to the door. “My finding of London and the portion of ancient forest will establish my name worldwide.”

A wonderful breeze swept his face as he stepped out. Soft sunlight illumined the slope, and the scene below glowed like a mirage. The ancient trees quivered gently, tall ferns rustled, and clear blue water bubbled up in one of the melting pools. His eyes were drawn to dark patches, and he supposed them to be the quicksand containing the remains of London.

Evaporating ice created areas of drifting mist at the edge of the forest. The effect seemed almost magical. Doug studied the glittering droplets, and then he spotted something more and halted. A ghostly image moved near the water - a man. Doug nearly gasped at the sight - had London fooled him? If so, the notebook was an elaborate trick. The old survivalist's intention had been to put him off guard and ambush him.

Doug pulled a pistol from his side pack, and when he looked again, he saw the image of London fading in and out like a strange hologram. It caused him to blink. Damned if he wasn't seeing a ghost - and it was beginning to shimmer as its face and arms opened to the sun.

Melting to mist, the glimmering phantom rose, and Doug's eyes followed it. He expected to see it fade into the pale northern sun, and it did. Only this sun had a huge solar storm at its center - the pupil of an eye looking back at him.

Beyond the sun, hostile clouds cloaked the horizon. They were rolling in like some dark scroll of the end. Fear charged him, then his head began to whirl - another form of chaos, and sunspots had blackened his thoughts.

Doug felt his legs giving way. He could hear Joe London whispering something strange ... and as he fell, the voice of a child passed on a message he couldn't quite understand. On his back, he saw a shield of sun blaze. He knew it would end all human life on Earth, but gently, like a forest fire. Tomorrow, the world would rise again, and a new life form would rule it.

-- the end –

Long Way Down

(A Grim Reaper tale)

By Gary Morton

New Year's Eve, a long way back, I think. Yeah, that's it. I remember the trees blazing with lights - and the explosion.

The story starts at City Hall Square, just after sunset. I was sitting on a stone bench by the skating rink, killing the boredom by sipping whiskey from an ancient silver flask. Children skated clumsily by - a blur of colors and innocent voices in my mind. I knew a black event was about to occur, and it began with a grim-faced, disgraced politician named Howard S. emerging at the big oak front doors. The guy had decided to kill himself with industrial dynamite, and my job was to collect him.

Howard didn't hesitate; he stopped and started snapping his cheap plastic lighter. It worked, but he couldn't get to the twined fuses. I studied him with interest, but the action was blocked when a giant cop noticed my liquor flask and stepped out of the dazzle of the Christmas lights to hassle me.

“Can't drink at this costume party, Mr. Reaper,” he said, holding out his lumpy hand for the flask. “It’ll be a night in jail for you, for your own safety.”

“Say, officer - see that guy over there,” I said as I buried the booze in my cloak. “He's got a big knife hidden in his coat.”

The cop frowned and looked. He saw chubby Howard S. behaving suspiciously, toying with something large inside his winter trench coat, and decided to forget me and walk over and check.

He got there just as the dynamite went off - it was the two of them in that part of the square, and it looked quite spectacular … the whole thing hitting me in drunken slow motion. The bodies flying apart like cork flares of blood, bone, and torn cloth; a cooked torso shooting over the city Peace Garden. A lot of flesh vanished in the flash fire, but the politician's false teeth and his bloody jawbone landed near the skating rink among a crowd of horrified parents.

Panic followed - I decided to avoid the fleeing crowd by walking through the area of the explosion, and was just stepping on the blast-cracked concrete when the yelling started. Damn booze, I’d forgotten to make myself invisible, and now a bunch of uniformed guards and cops were running toward me - guns drawn, with the idea that I was the terrorist who’d just struck. I don't suppose being and looking like the Grim Reaper helped me much.

But it did help in that I cast a long shadow, and as they ran into it, they died … the bodies of the first two cops thumping to the cold cement just beneath the band shell.

Glock muzzles flashed and hot bullets dug into me - and enough was enough. I vanished into shifting smoke and shadows and then stepped from the veil at the side of a skyscraper a block away. Shaking off the lead, I noticed I was on an empty street beside a hotel Christmas display and a newspaper box. And as I started to walk away, the headline caught my eye - Fourth Grim Reaper Mutilation Killing.

Melting the box open, I grabbed a copy and read the article. The story meant I would stay in town. A sort of copyright thing - I don't allow others to impersonate me in the death business. It could cause confusion.

“Hum,” I wondered where to find this guy. But I couldn't think, as the Christmas lights on the hotel blinded me. Flashing bulbs created an animation of Santa waving and sent waves of pain into my brain. I popped on shades of darkness, and all went comfortably gray.

The best way to trace a man is from his point of death - and this guy had one, but it was murky and unsettled. Perhaps it was as yet undecided as to who would get to him first and kill him. Trying a different angle, I switched my view to see all the people in the city dressed in Reaper costumes. Turned out there were two hundred of them, and the effect of it nearly knocked me over.

“Son of a bitch!” I raised a fist, forgetting that I still had my deadly silver-knuckled gloves on. A stray bolt flew from them and struck a man emerging on the marbled steps of a nearby building. He had no chance to scream. Cooked, he fell to the cement.

Walking over, I noticed the building sign read Supreme Court, and as I tossed the man's spirit into the black velvet of a temporary holding pit, I gathered he was a judge. His body looked like a rather large and burned roast, the blood still bubbling up. Gazing at him, it saddened me that my mistake was much like many of his rulings - arbitrary and deadly. Now the poor chap would just have to wait in the holding pits with the rest.

Deciding it would be better to think things out over a drink, I turned back and went over to the hotel. Sirens were screaming over near the square. The hotel bar seemed safe, but as I got through the first set of doors, I found myself confronted by a bouncer and an armed task-force cop.

The cop raised a Remington rifle. “Don't even think of moving.”

“Drop dead,” I replied, and they both did, and I stepped over them and found my way to the bar.

The dark paneling oozed dampness and smoke; the lights flickered. Invisible, I drifted in the visions of my shades, studying the various people in Reaper costumes. My target finally came into view in a house in the northern part of the city. He was a muscular guy grinning at his mirror. I would've passed him over, but a telltale woman's scalp hanging from a nail on his closet gave him away.

Taking a moment, I read his mind and found that his New Year was to be celebrated with a killing. Since I've never really liked big parties, I decided to join him. To profile him, I would say he was handsome, of a solid build, and had all those friendly, traditional qualities of the psychopaths American publishers enjoy. After his death, he would live on in books titled either "Grim" or "Reaper". But let's keep in mind that I am Grim Reaper, and I don't write for American publishers. So, despite his heroic charm, I can say that, to me, he was just a nuisance in need of punishment.

His lair wasn't in his home. It was located in a dead portion of the sewer beneath an abandoned silo on the waterfront. I chose to get there at 11:30, fifteen minutes ahead of him.

Looking around, I found his base choice of atmosphere good, but his taste in detail effeminate. A small altar of rose marble was used for animal sacrifice. Daggers were decorated with grinning imps. He even had a miniature chainsaw with a pearl handle. The place smelled pretty, with herbs and dead flowers everywhere. He kept the corpses somewhere else.

The chainsaw was a nice little weapon - I tried a few sample slashes with it, then kept it and toyed with it as I waited on a stool behind a black linen curtain off to the side of the altar.

A minute later, the killer showed up with an unconscious blond victim in tow. I listened as he tossed her down on a straw mat and undressed her. She came to and screamed as he was arranging his knives and humming a sort of rap tune to himself.

This disturbed him, and he turned to her and threw a dagger into the wall beside her. His golden curls fell foppishly in his face as he put on a nasty grimace. “Scream and scream, my lady. Because soon your head will be gone.”

And he was correct in that statement - in reading his mind, I had noted that he was a very dull serial killer who first cut the victim's head off with a chainsaw. Sort of like a butcher, he preferred to work with dead meat.

His pre-death ritual was long and boring. The decisive moment came when he decided to seize his chainsaw and discovered that it wasn't there on its stand.

A ghastly look stamped his cold, carved face as he realized that someone had been there, defiling his lair. He looked around suspiciously, then walked over and pulled the curtain open.

His jaw dropped.

“Looking for this?” I said as I raised the chainsaw.

He countered by backing off and raising two daggers - I pulled the cord and tossed the buzzing weapon. Dropping the blades, he caught the handle, nearly chopping his balls off as he tried to balance the saw; then his angry eyes widened as he stared at me.

“What's your game?” he said. “And how did you find me?”

“My game is death. If I found you, guess that means you're dead.”

The captive lady heard this and whimpered and cried.

But he didn't - he just restarted the chainsaw and charged.

A crude killer, he moved in with force to thrust the saw through my chest. Blood gushed from the wound, and I went back against the wall, groaning before releasing a death wheeze and rattle. Then I slid to the floor, and the animal kept cutting, staring into my open but dead eyes.

Tossing the gore-soaked saw aside, he put his hand right into the bleeding hole in my chest. “I'm going to eat your heart,” he said, hot saliva spraying my face. But you don't seem to have ... a heart.”

My eyes ignited. “Grim Reaper has no heart,” I said, black pupils sucking him in, and then he was falling as he flew back and crashed into the altar.

I rose, chainsaw in hand. “Now, let's see if you have a heart. Cause if you do, you’re a fake Grim Reaper.”

He shook. He stuttered. “You really are the Reaper.” Then he grinned. “So this is a warning, right. You can't kill me, and you can't save her. I know the rules. The Grim Reaper collects the dead. You can't play God.”

Pausing, I popped the cork off a slim silver flask and took a swallow. “Theologically and morally, you are correct. But who said you had to die?”

“What?” he said.

“This,” I replied as I threw the chainsaw. It buzzed into him and stayed humming as I stepped over. Lowering my shades, I froze him in a wave of darkness. Then I grabbed the saw and cut him open. Violet organs and tubes spilled out and hung. I removed his heart and put it in his open hand.

Turning away, I lifted my shades and smiled at the lovely blond lady. “Later,” I said, and she vanished and reappeared somewhere in the dark city night.

Spinning around, I roused him and said. “There you are - theologically and morally correct. You are alive. You feel no pain, and you no longer have a heart. Unless you count the one you are holding in your hand.”

“Duh, duh,” he said, horror on his face as he looked down at his gutted chest and the heart in his hand. “I can't live like this.”

“Ah, I see. You can't live without a heart like the Reaper. Then die, you fake!”

Silver in the abyss. The scythe swung, and he fell into darkness. “And hold onto your heart,” he heard me say. “'Cause it's a hell of a long way down.”

And down echoes with him, in the pit … forever.

Then I resolved to be theologically correct in the future.

“I won't kill people anymore,” I said to myself as I leaped up and out. “Time to hang up my lightning gloves.”

Only I forgot to dematerialize into the night, and I knocked down the sewer wall and about half of the concrete silo. About ten policemen were out there, preparing to raid the place. The debris came down and crushed them all.

New Year's resolutions never did work for me - It’s a cruel world, isn't it? Life itself is a long way down. Better to be dead in the first place.

--the end –

Grim is Coming to Town

(A Grim Reaper tale)

By Gary Morton

She perished in a catastrophe at one of the Moon-Belt Space Stations. A final freak explosion reduced her remains to radioactive spores of frozen blood.

I showed to collect, finding space an infinitely cold horror. Foolish flesh-and-blood pioneers think they can endure outer space, but I prefer it naked, radioactive, and untamed. Rescuing her vitals in my own style of black hole, I returned and scattered the ashes over December’s northern sky.

In the upper gloom, fire then ice formed a cocoon that kept me secure, and I managed to land wearing a mane of fused snowflakes. I shivered and shook them off. My eyes glossed over with cold tears, and at first I saw nothing but charcoal outlines. I raised my head to the sky and saw dark streaks brushed across a canvas of dull mercury; though it was 4:30 in the afternoon, it was so dark it seemed as if night had fallen.

Usually, I arrive in random city locations to kill boredom. This time, I’d picked a forgotten semi-industrial zone near Toronto’s waterfront. A spot so dull and destitute it made even the strong feel wretched.

There wasn’t a soul on the narrow street. Snow powder sifted down over a lot covered in frozen mud crust and rusty machinery. I could see Christmas decorations and signs on a new condo-and-shops tower two blocks away. The rush of distant traffic drifted to my ears, and I gathered that this was one of those tiny pockets of nowhere that exist in every city. The area was apparently owned by a stray black cat scampering north to a fence at the end of the lot.

I decided to follow him into the city, but paused to choose my mode of travel. One of the good things about my line of work is having the power to do anything if it’s required to ensure death and maintain the supernatural status quo. Unfortunately, I lack imagination, and in modern times, I’ve often turned to comic books and movies for inspiration. It would be possible to leap into town like the Incredible Hulk, or slide in like the Ice Man, or how about adding some sizzle and scorch to those huge corporate ads as the Flaming Torch. Then there’s plain old Superman or Bizarro, or maybe plain old me.

… and that became my decision. Go in on foot and mask myself with the usual cloak of shadows. There really wasn’t a reason to hurry, and I often go for a reflective walk near Christmas.

Exhaling a gust of wind, I tumbled the yellow-painted machinery aside and crossed on a curled lip of frozen mud. A section of the fence slammed into a concrete wall; I went through and around to a wide avenue. Traffic raced in a smoggy underpass. I strolled past a handful of homeless people resting by a fire burning on cement shelves under the steel beams. Rancid odors filled my nose as I reflected on misery. Around the world, people perished like flies, and my minions didn’t have a sack of black magic big enough to sweep things clean.

Global economics and war favored the extinction of all but the rich celebrity and consumer classes. Even devils lost in this game, innocent bodies piling into mountains, leading to an overcrowded heaven and a hell populated by corporate CEOs, investors, warmongers, terrorists, and the guests of celebrity talk shows. Oil, greed, meanness, and spite had polluted the environment and were the basis of the contemporary Christmas spirit. As the Grim Reaper and CEO of Death Incorporated, I’ve always viewed myself as a nice guy compared to some of them … and of course, they all fall into my clutches in the end. Squashing some of the big fish has always been the most enjoyable part of my job.

The scene and my mood brightened in the commercial core, beginning with the sparkle and flash of lights in an open area of decorated outdoor trees. A scatter of signs and ads on a street of malls spilled blurred designer neon through swirling snow. The ads spread like tattooed skin, blemishing nearly every open area of public space.

If the denizens of this city were a product of their environment, they were all on sale … but despite that, they hurried by looking somewhat dazed and frustrated. Many of them were out shopping for presents, and I began to wonder – what to give? There are no letters asking for gifts from me, but every Christmas I give a gift of some kind to the locals … wherever I happen to be.

It’s always an original gift idea … but this year, a worldwide recession and the usual mass death had guillotined my imagination and giving mood. Nothing seemed right. I felt more like killing myself and escaping my dirty job. I scratched my throbbing head. What better gift than to finish myself? It would be original, and I’d leave the world devoid of death, or at least technically so. People would still get sick, bodies would fail, but the soul would remain to animate the rotting corpse. It would be ghostly and ghastly immortality, and eternal grief. People would appreciate me and my past services.

I knew better than to finish myself in a shabby way. It would have to be dramatic. Stopping, I searched my empty skull for ideas, and I found none, but I did notice a huge tower and settled on jumping to my death. This high tower would be fitting as one of the world's tallest. I was in town to clean up after a brainwashed American CIA operative posing as a terrorist suicide-bombed a dance club inside a mall, so maybe I could jump there and steal the show with my own death.

And that was the deal. Leap from the tower and descend to the mall. Annihilate myself by crashing through the skylight, upstaging the creep before his bomb detonated. “A great idea,” I thought, cracking my knuckles as I turned down a snow-blown alley.

I took the elevator up to the tower restaurant and found the dining area packed with business types. With me, people usually see what they want to see, so I didn’t look out of place, though I did feel out of place.

My last meal was a quiet one with much more wine than food. I never did eat much, which is probably why I’m a bag of bones. The friendly chatter and laughter around me failed to cheer me. I knew that booze was doing the talking. Purposely emptying my mind, I gazed at a pleasant smear of window decorations, frost, and city lights. I didn’t want to think or remember. My mental buzz faded, but I remained irritated by a faint odor of death emanating from a few drunken hockey fans at a table nearby.

When the time was right, I strolled to the window, raised my arms, and used fake lightning to blast out a circular section. High winds and snow swept in, tearing up the tables, and I had to reverse it to blow it all out.

An inspirational current of air took me, and I felt some satisfaction in detecting a chain of heart attacks hitting the restaurant's panicked patrons.

Canyons of colored lights tilted drunkenly below. My coat billowed with wind and flurries, and I yelled in celebration, sending out a noisy blast that briefly stopped hearts for blocks on the ground.

A fast stream of wind teased and iced my hair. I used it and my coat as a slow sail, guiding me over the tops of the skyscrapers toward the location fate and death had marked.

Snow swirled into twisted fingers that clutched at the bright tumble of buildings. The thrust of nature seemed to be to hang on when I had let go.

In a moment of illusion, the entire city took form as a jeweled Christmas decoration, then it trembled and shattered into bones.

The building I approached rose as a random asteroid, a central glass cone shining like crystal among the surrounding towers. I was close enough to see a flow of shoppers swelling to crowds at the revolving doors below. My feelings, like theirs, seemed part of an artificial dream, like maybe I’d wake up and realize I’d been made of wood all along, yet I still sailed on blindly toward that final revelation.

For a long moment, the whole universe felt wonderfully counterfeit, then genuine realization hit me.

“Yikes! I forgot about the part where your life passes before you!”

I choked on a flurried gust as a mightier force took me. A black wave crested to blind the light. Everybody, and that’s every person who had died, opened a damp coffin in my memory, bursting forth as an explosion of corpses from a foul graveyard world. Ghostly pale, blue, and bruised and battered, spitting out rainbows of tears, pus, venom, blood, and vomit as their gaping mouths sought to torment me.

Ghastly legions, they trampled and stained my heart and soul. Their vengeful spirits sought gods and devils to devour. An ocean of skulls swam in my brain, making my thoughts waters of pain and loss. So many of them had found some pathetic little reason to live, some poisonous little thread to cling to, and they wanted to hang on and pull themselves back through me.

Hunger stood behind their dreams. It was all they’d ever had, and if they returned, they’d clamp jaws of death from pole to pole.

Their faces rose by the thousands in hideous fireworks … vivid and gut-wrenching … John Kennedy shot by his double … Elvis choking on pizza … Hitler eaten by lions in Africa … John Lennon trying to fend off Paul’s knife . . . it overwhelmed me, and I blacked out … then I awoke and found myself still falling in the dark.

Various shops and eateries were visible under the glass roof below. I looked about for the destined spot – a crowded dance club – aimed for it, and spun head-over-heels in the wind as I collided with three levels of steel and glass.

The impact was merciless. A thousand razor edges sheared my flesh. Wind followed, exploding the entire roof behind me, and like the crest of a deadly wave, I rode a pounding drumbeat down to the dancers on the floor, hitting them as a stinging rain of blood and needles.

A tremendous mood of rest followed. I felt lifeless, empty, and free at last. Peaceful clouds drifted down a vast sky, and there was no pain or excitement. Then it ended as the clouds darkened and formed a divine frown.

I woke in the dance club, finding myself on the bar counter, or at least my head was there. The rest of my body had gone AWOL. Most of the people had exited. About twenty remained, and they were spattered with blood and working to carry out a few who were wounded. My past power of death seemed converted to a weaker form that created a lot of work for plastic surgeons. I didn’t see any casualties other than myself.

Three burly club security guys scoured the floor, overturning tables in a search for buried victims. One table remained erect, and it had a bloody torso on it. They greeted it with frightened stares and backed off. A severed arm and leg appeared when some other gruesome rubble was cleared.

A redheaded man with double earrings in each lobe approached the bar. His eyes widened to pools of black when he saw me. He was about to say something to the others. Then I scowled, and his words caught in his throat. Dust helped him choke more as he turned and hurried to the door.

Sirens from approaching rescue vehicles grew louder. The security men went out to meet them, leaving me alone to contemplate my future as a severed head. I viewed it as a crippling disability, to say the least. Bad enough that if I didn’t die from it, I’d be forced to live on as a revolting wretch that people pitied.

Pulling the plug on me would’ve been the best thing, but the higher powers never were open-minded about euthanasia, and that unfortunate fact got highlighted a moment later with new movement in the room. My right arm climbed toward me, and my torso came to life. I felt a tenuous connection to it and faint pain that got much worse when it oozed off the table.

It slid to me, leaving a wake of glass and blood. Other body parts and torn bits of flesh and hair followed. So it meant I was getting it all together again in spiritual healing that hurt like hell, or at least my body was giving it a try before being rudely interrupted.

Police burst in, a half dozen of them, the two men in the lead armed with rifles. They saw me, and the team leader spoke to the others.

“What is that thing? Is it alive or dead?”

“Better shoot it to make sure,” said a black cop on the right.

“Go ahead, it won’t make any difference,” I said, spinning my head completely around on my neck as I spoke.

Then he aimed the weapon and was about to shoot, but didn’t get the shot off because the side service elevator suddenly opened and the scheduled suicide bomber stepped into the room. The gun’s aim swung to him. A look of surprise painted his face.

“Shit, I forgot about him,” I thought, remembering that he’d been destined to kill nearly everyone in the club, and would have done so had I not interfered. But what the heck. The reaper is only inhuman, and sometimes personal problems get in the way of the job.

A finger tightened on the trigger. A hand went to a button on a belt, then the whole place went up in flames, and I was back on the job. But this time, I used my powers and let the rest of the suckers die.

Out on the cold, wind-blown street, the crowd saw something coming out of the billowing smoke, and they described it as an explosion of ice, flying out of the club like a slow-motion movie trailing fire. There was a man in its center, his clothes burned and tarnished with ashes and soot, his face like a mask, his eyes red. He curved upward into the sky and vanished into the night, leaving a comet-like wake as the ice showered down.

--the end --

DWELLERS

By Gary Morton

Stars vanished in a violet explosion, causing him to roll and moan. Then a new dream began. Eddy knew he was dreaming; he often did. This was a lousy dream, one of those repeating dreams he hated. He struggled to wake, but without success - the effort was another phase of the nightmare.

The lights were bright, and everyone he admired looked on; only he couldn't see them - he couldn't see anything but glare. It was the sort of awareness a paranoid schizophrenic person gets - everyone was there, and God, he wished they weren't. They had to know he in no way deserved the award he was about to receive.

Eddy had his clothes on this time, but he wished he hadn't worn such a huge pair of soiled running shoes with his suit. If he’d shaved and taken a bath, it would’ve been better, too. Naturally, it was too late to run to the can; he was up, and his name was ringing in his ears. Why did the guy have to shout so loudly?

A face showed, and it wasn't Robert Robinson this time. “Who in the hell is it?” he thought. “Or who in the hell are they?” By they, he meant that a sort of shape shifter from hell was presenting this year's Mars Victory Award. The face shifted rapidly, and some visages were of writers who died years ago.

Gulping visibly, Eddy began to walk. The glare didn't blind him, and there was some relief in that... what really knocked him out was the shape shifter. It was switching through a bunch of B-movie zombie bodies that looked too real to be hallucinations. He feared insanity - maybe his mind had snapped. The setup sucked, the lights were hot enough to melt his runners, and the cheap rubber soles made a horrible sucking noise as he climbed the three large steps to the platform. He turned and saw some faces grinning through the glare. All eyes were on his feet, and he smiled nervously as his cheeks reddened.

Blood dribbled from the corners of the shape shifter's mouth as he said a few words in a distorted monotone. Eddy picked up the words "visionary" and "brilliant" as his eyes focused on the award. He'd won with his first story. It was a gadget story he sort of borrowed from one of his pals, and to his dismay, this year's award had been redesigned to look exactly like the ugly contraption in the story. A piece of junk, really. He'd forever be explaining it to others, and he doubted many of them would believe it was an award and not something he'd welded together in a junkyard.

At one time, Eddy had been critical of gadget stories and tales that predicted the future. Leonardo da Vinci would always be remembered for predicting the airplane, but who would remember forty thousand science fiction writers for the gadgets they had predicted first? Only a minute ago, he'd believed awards to be surrogates when it came to fiction; if you forget to reward yourself by writing what you really want to write, you'll forever seek awards from others. Now, as an award winner, his views had changed, and his fears were gone. He decided to say a few words.

He looked to the audience and had to pause to wipe tears from his eyes; tears that were an effect of the lights and not his emotions. “Some people can predict the future,” he said, then shouts cut him off, and faces loomed up. It wasn't an audience of writers after all, but a gang of reviewers and critics. The sort of people who wouldn't let you say a small word without tearing it down.

One of them was his high school English teacher, Ms. Mansion, and she mounted the stage, waving his old report card, yelling, “Eddy Dash couldn't have written that story! Here are his marks! He failed high school English at Trent! And he never would admit that he's gay.”

Eddy's head began to spin. Ms. Mansion snatched at the award, and they began to fight over it. Pulling back, he knocked the shape shifter and got free of her. She came at him again, and he got her with a vicious kick to the shin, causing her to howl. He grinned, unable to stop himself - he'd always wanted to give her that kick. “That one's for everyone you made me hate!” he screamed. He looked at the audience and saw people in shock. Obviously, they believed he was out of his mind. “She made me hate everyone; really, she did,” he whined. And it was true; there were no writers he hated more than the ones he'd studied in school. Like most English teachers, Ms. Mansion dissected everything, killing the mystery and the story, turning exciting authors into pieces of bullshit grammar.

A flash brought him back to reality. It was the shape shifter; he'd transformed into a weird version of one of the old TV Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. He raised a weapon that reminded Eddy of Judge Dredd and fired. Flaming oil shot out and hit Ms. Mansion, burning her like she was a wax witch.

Eddy faced the shape shifter and shook. Now the thing had a dark robe and a golden mask; the weapon's arm was still up. “You wrote a story about the future?” the shifter said.

“I didn't write it. I stole it from Steve,” Eddy said, beginning to weep. “I can't write about the future. I can't write anything. It's the others who can predict the future.”

“A Dweller from the future will be talking to you, Eddy. You have done well,” the shifter said. “But the others haven't been honest.” He turned to face the gasping crowd. “You fools!” he shouted. “Don't you know the future is something you will not predict?” He lifted his weapon arm and sent burning oil streaming into the crowd. Horrible screaming began; blood, fire, and smoke fanned up and roared.

Eddy shot up in bed and cradled his head in his hands. Not that guilt dream again. It had been repeated about a hundred times and was related to his failing in creative writing. God, he hated it. Damn, failing creative writing, and in Canada, where anyone who could write a paragraph passed. He'd never get over it.

His erection was staring him in the face, so he covered it, wondering if he wasn't becoming just a little perverse. Was seeing people fry giving him a rod, or was it Ms. Mansion? He hoped it was seeing people burn.

The clock was at ten, but it looked more like night outside. He went to the window naked and glanced down, and then he jumped back. It looked like a crowd below. Deciding to get dressed, he went to the closet and fished through the heap; he kept summer shorts and T-shirts in a pile so getting dressed would be easy. Eddy was lazy; he never wore long pants in the summer because they were too hard to put on. Eddy Dash - even his name seemed wrong, like it described someone exciting rather than a person considered a dreamer and mentally slow. Looking in the mirror, he saw a slim young man with prominent cheekbones, a sharp nose, and a mop of blond hair; he wore an earring, but it didn't make him appear effeminate. Young and handsome, perhaps, but the difference was there in his eyes. They always looked strange and otherworldly, like he was hooked on some powerful drug. The drug was his mind, which had always been off balance, hooked on dreams.

Ten minutes more and he'd miss breakfast at the Emerald Hotel across the street. Stepping back to the window, he looked down to check the crowd and found that it wasn't a crowd. The people were shadows. If you could call them that. Forms moving slowly, rolling and shifting like tumbleweeds, most of them not connected to any real objects. Flecks of light drifted hypnotically like snowflakes, and he thought of winter, remembering Christmas. The shadows were his cousins carrying gifts. He saw Mary standing under the big tree in the town square. She was beautiful, with flowing hair and eyes that glittered with dreams. Pain stabbed at his heart because Mary had drowned, and he was alone. Even his cousins hadn't spoken to him since Uncle Jack had decided to disown him. Now he had the graveyard flowers, the sound of the river, and the screech of tires from the accident that executed his parents and brother - all of it flowing past.

“Not that dreaming while I'm awake shit again!” Eddy thought, pounding the wall. He recalled the disadvantages. It was a condition he sometimes got. Dreaming was a condition he always had. Usually, he daydreamed when he was awake. He lacked normal concentration, and because of it, he was out of work, collecting medical welfare. Things other people called simple tasks were too much for him; he couldn't even go fishing without cutting his finger while hooking the bait. He always drifted off into other thoughts, and his wandering mind bungled the task.

Depression of the suicidal sort was the result, so instead of finding success in life, he graduated from high school to welfare and a tiny apartment on Brightsville's main drag. It wasn't good for the old self-image, and when it did occasionally emerge from behind the wall of dreams, he saw himself as a loser.

The hicks at the restaurant were sure he was gay, and Eddy reflected on that as he went out the door. Since he was handsome and young, the hicks were probably more like wishing he was ... they would screw anybody - man, woman, or thing - they just wouldn't admit to it. Being the only guy in the area without a car didn't help much when it came to getting a reputation for dating women, and he knew that wouldn't change - he hadn't been in a car since the day his parents died in the crash, or out on a date since Mary died. And he wasn't gay or anything; he was a sort of loner - a guy with only one friend. Even a person with a handicap would get some kind of work in a small town, because of the buddy factor. Eddy knew that, but it was of little help; he disliked other men. In this town, they weren't like him, so he shut them out.

The door creaked open on blowing shadows and an empty street- ghost-town airs. Eddy was afraid to step outside. Malformed dark clouds scudded under a stone-gray sky. He pictured himself choking to death in shadows that were really poison gas, and then he stepped out and looked around. No one was on the street, and the shadows did feel hot when they touched him, like he was getting sunburned or something. Some pickups parked up by the Emerald meant the restaurant was full of older hicks. They were the only guys who still favored pickups.

Old creeps or not, Eddy was still hungry, and the Emerald was the only place where he didn't have to pay. He did some dishes sometimes, and he’d promised old Jake he'd keep an eye on the place from his window and report if he saw anybody spray-painting JEW BOY on the windows again. Some of the country hip-hop boys didn't like Jews, and Jake wasn't a Jew... but what could they do when there were no real Jews around to pick on?

Going in the front door would draw all eyes to him, so he headed down the alley and went to the service entrance at the back. The door was open, so he went in, glancing at the kitchen as he passed. A fat woman was in there instead of the regular cook, but that didn't interest him, so he went straight to the main room and stopped by the jukebox for a look-see. Maybe he'd eat in the kitchen if the customers were too ugly.

A new version of Only the Lonely was ending. Dan Montana, Joe River, and Missy Marshall were sitting at a table by the window. They stared through the glass at the shadows. Red splotches like birthmarks or acid burns marred their faces. The other patrons, older guys Eddy didn't know by name, had their chairs arranged so they faced Joe.

Missy suddenly came to life, her knuckles flashing as she caught a bug running across the table. It was a roach. She ate it, licked her lips, then her expression deadened.

Joe turned his face from the window. “Fine weather today,” he said. “The Dweller will be rising early. Guess I'd better go over to the park and supervise the work.”

“Who does he want now?” Missy said.

“Plenty to choose from,” Joe said. “Maybe I'll get Jake and let him make the pick.”

It was like they'd dreamed they were zombies, and it'd come half true. Eddy stared as Dan Montana picked something black and gross from a plate of fries and began to munch on it. A homely woman with a fright wig of lifeless blond hair was coming over to the jukebox, so he figured leaving was the best idea. He stepped back, knocked over some empty bottles, and froze as everyone looked his way.

“Hey, kid!” Joe yelled, rising and knocking over the table. Eddy gulped. He saw something shiny - a brand-new Ruger shotgun Joe had been holding in his lap.

The blond woman suddenly bared her teeth and lunged, so he turned and ducked through the door, hearing the gun blast as he moved. Blood painted the wall, and the woman's headless body crashed at his heels. One quick look back at the corpse and a jawbone embedded in the broken floor, and he took off like a cannon shot.

Swirling shadows made it nearly impossible to see anything in the alley. Dizzied by the furious motion, Eddy ran on, stumbling and tripping until he ran out of breath. He leaned against a graffiti-scarred wall, his head spinning, his lungs aching. Moments later, he fell to his knees, hallucinating.

The alley walls melted; he found himself in a shimmering tube, facing a panel of electronic instruments. A golden face appeared on a screen and began to speak, but the words slurred; he didn't get the message except for the last two sentences, which were: “You must stay alive! The Dweller needs you!”

As swiftly as it came, the illusion vanished. Eddy looked down the alley, feeling refreshed. No one was out back of the Emerald; it looked like the creeps were either slow or they weren't going to give chase. He rose and ran back to Main Street and checked the front. The pickups were still there, and no one was outside.

Not sure what to do, he ran to his apartment to barricade himself inside. Reaching the top of the stairs, he threw the door open, saw someone standing there, and swung, catching the guy with a hard punch. The guy went down, and Eddy realized he'd just hammered his pal, his only friend, Steve.

Steve looked up from his knees, his blond hair tangled, and his baby face desperate. “I hear the voice. I hear it,” he said. “Don't hit me.”

“What voice?” Eddy said.

“You must not be one of them,” Steve said, getting up. He rubbed his sore jaw. “It's the rest of the gang I'm talking about. I just ran a half mile to get away.”

“No. You mean our people are nuts, too? I’m running from the hicks. They tried to shoot me.”

“Something happened early this morning,” Steve said. “I was sleepwalking. Woke up out on the sidewalk and saw other people sleeping on the road and grass. Brown shadows were blowing, and there were no morning sounds, then some kind of light exploded right through the ground and woke everyone.”

“Funny,” Eddy said. “Nothing happened to me. I had that same old nightmare about winning an award with your story.”

“We're different, though,” Steve said. “I got the weird sleep disorder, and you're dream crazy. I think whatever changed people got fed in through their dreams or their thoughts, and we opted out because we're not normal.”

“Could be. But I did hear a voice telling me to stay alive.”

“Can't be the same one. The other voice split the town in half. It's a death voice. Our younger friends think they have to kill the adults and the adults think they're obeying a creature called the Dweller.”

“We'd better find out if it's only in Brightsville.” Walking to the far wall, Eddy grabbed his dresser and wheeled it over by the window. He opened the door behind it and went into the next room, which was his computer room. He had the computer hidden because he didn't want the welfare department to find it and declare it an asset. He also didn't want them to find out it was a source of income, loaded with outstanding games that he rented out.

“This is definitely no time for playing games,” Steve said, his pale blue eyes widening with disbelief.

“I figure this is safer than the phone. You should know how to get the most info, being that you're a tech nerd?”

“That's cracker with family corporate connections,” he said, sliding out the keyboard. “We're not nerds now. What we are is unknown. Everyone is on the net now, and no one knows shit.”

“Yeah. They're hooked on Microsoft and Apple. Whatever happened to old-fashioned country values - like believing in doing sweet nothing and bumming around?”

“Old-fashioned values are out and renamed as really dumb social networking. But is it true friendship or a new name for desperation? Say, according to the weatherboard, it's a sunny day everywhere except in Brightsville. Looks like normal messages on the Trent U board. I think it's safe to talk to someone there. Only Brightsville has been shadow-bombed.”

Steve was about to key in when the screen went blank, and then they heard a blast. A second explosion blew the window out in the room behind them.

Eddy spun around and saw splinters of wood and glass nailed into the wall. “Take the stairs to the back,” he said. “Get ready, go!”

They flew out and across the room, getting out the door as another blast came through. Eddy bounded down the stairs, threw the back door open, and found himself facing a sixtyish shotgun-toting redneck. He snatched the barrel before he had a chance to aim and whacked him over the head with the butt. The guy went down, Eddy kept the shotgun, and they ran between the sheds and over to the next street.

People were standing in front of Montana Hardware, so they ducked into an empty barbershop. Catching his breath, Eddy studied the shotgun; it was new, a Remington with a fancy catch for extra ammo. “I haven't felt this way since the last time the Cross Gang chased me.”

“You'd better be ready to meet the Cross Gang again, because they've taken the lead of the high school kids and the battle against the adults. Most of the fighting is going on out by the quarry.”

“Shit,” Eddy said. “I got them and the hicks hating me the first time by making a speech in favor of gun control. Now I'm going to have to blast them with a gun. This whole deal is breaking my heart. I never thought I'd be a worse monster than the monsters. I never thought I'd be calm after passing into hell. Life’s a survival bitch.”

“Oh-oh,” Steve said. “I hear someone in the alley.”

Ducking behind a coat rack, they watched as a rifle-toting man appeared. It was Abe Hardcastle, their high school principal; he wore a tattered suit, and blood, dirt, and whiskers added an edge to his pinched expression. Hardcastle was a right-wing extremist and had taken personal time to counter Eddy's high school speech on gun control. He likely would have shot to kill even yesterday. Messing with him wasn't a good idea.

Hardcastle spotted the partially open door of the barbershop, raised his rifle, and fired a shot through the wood. A mirror and bottles of tonic exploded; Eddy ducked to the right, then back as a bullet shattered the window.

Hardcastle marched straight for the entrance, so Eddy dropped and rolled on the floor. A hard boot knocked the door open; Hardcastle showed, his aim ready, his huge jaw set - and Eddy fired ... both barrels flaming. The recoil pounded back, and the blast hammered Hardcastle; his midsection crumpling, becoming a flying shower of dark gore as his body went out to the street. He was cut right in half - his legs did a dance into some garbage cans, and his upper chest and head caught on a parking meter and hung there.

Steve jumped out through the broken window and looked down the street at the hardware store, then waved for Eddy to come out. Eddy staggered out, still shaken by the recoil and what he'd done to Hardcastle. A couple of guys were running up from the hardware store, so they took off and headed toward the town square.

Bullets whizzed through the maples as they ran across a lawn. Lilac hedges, a rubbish heap, and an old shed put distance between them and their pursuers. Eddy ducked behind a broken foundation wall in a vacant lot. Steve followed, and they waited.

“Looks like they're not following,” Eddy said. He looked at the shed, the milkweed, the thistles, the crabgrass, and the broken stones. It seemed like the world was on a tilt, except for the shadows; it was a cloudy summer day. “If this were one of your stories, what would be the cause of this?”

“Doesn't work like a story because there has to be an explanation for it, and supernatural Cthulhu or zombie explanations don't cut the mustard as far as real science goes.”

“It has something to do with the future because the voice I heard came with a dream of the future. I didn't see much, a golden mask... the sort of video their equipment displayed was almost like reality. Maybe it's fifty years from now.”

Fifty years isn't much time. It has to be more—the distant future. I think there will be nothing but imagination then. We're nearly through harnessing just the physics side of nature. Most new discoveries help free the mind and imagination. The end is the human imagination, free of nature's limitations, godlike beings. If the future is screwing with us now, it's them - the gods doing it.”

“I can't believe we will become gods. Extinction is what I believe in. The reason is that humans aren't fully emotional beings. We don't have enough feeling to care. All Hardcastle had to do was change a bit, and I killed him like nothing. It's not just this town; the whole world was going to hell for a long time, and the people didn't care. A true emotional being would suffer. Toys like cars and televisions are what they've always cared about.”

“You're deluding yourself with your beliefs. You saw a future, so believe it. We somehow overcome our flaws.”

“Okay, people of the future have caused this. So what next?”

“We observe the adults. See if we can get a look at this Dweller guy.”

Eddy grimaced. “Man, watching folks that want to blow us away isn't going to be easy.”

“There's a lot of activity near the park and the town square, and we can get good cover there.”

“Okay, I don't like it, but let's give it a try.”

A hot wind blew up summer dust, and pop cans rattled. They passed a mound of rubbish and went through a screen of reddening sumac. A statue of Lord Simcoe, with a fountain and flower garden, stood on the edge of the school grounds. Beyond the school, a street of factories and warehouses separated it from Hepburn Park and the town square. The sun glowed behind veils of haze, a blind eye lost in its own dreams, and the odd beam lanced through, adding a knife-edge gleam to the drifting shadows.

Trent High was usually open for summer school and the pool. Today, it looked deserted, with no cars in the parking lot. They crossed the football field, spooked by the eerie eclipse-style daylight. Steve found himself looking around too much, and finally he began to run, headed for the main building, an ivy-covered, university-style quad.

Eddy got ahead; he halted at the arched entrance to the quad. “If we run straight in, we could be spotted from all four directions.”

“Gotcha,” Steve said. Dodging left, they ran to a window. They forced it open and climbed into a chem lab. The sports complex and pool ran underground, beneath the quad. Cutting to a stairwell, they went down to the gate. A magnetic pass was needed, and they didn't have one, so Eddy simply kicked out a six-foot window beside the door.

After passing through a vestibule, they reached the pool and continued on to the exit on the other side of the quad. A rank odor and dead silence gave them an uneasy feeling. Slime of some sort shimmered on the water, so they walked up to the glass for a better look and saw something surfacing. It was a corpse rising, its face battered, swollen, and blue. The green-tinted water was still clear enough for them to see the bottom, and it was as full as a morgue slab after a chainsaw massacre. Bodies and torn body parts floated everywhere. It became obvious that the slime was green blood.

“Man, let's get out of here before I throw up,” Steve said.

“Not so fast. The killers might be around. We got to duck ambushes.”

Looking left and right, they went up to the ground floor and out the door. Dust blew into the arch, and they stepped into it, making sure to check their backs. The field at the center of the quad was now visible, and it wasn't clear. Two ragged men stood by a fountain.

“Oh, great,” Eddy said. “It's the fucking killers.”

“Yeah, and they look like two swamp mutants. Say, those are axes they're carrying.”

Eddy frowned; his mouth quivered. “I can just shoot them.” He moved to reload, but found he couldn't open the ammo catch. The two men were walking now, emerging from shadows and swirling dust as if they were coming through a tunnel from the extinct future Eddy believed in. He stared and froze for a moment. Blood, sweat, and dirt coated the men's faces; they wore uniforms of a savagely torn green material that showed they had been janitors before being reincarnated as subhuman losers. Scariest of all was the way they limped on bloodstained legs; it meant they were so bloodthirsty they had wounded themselves with their axes.

“Run,” Eddy said, “back inside. It'll be easier to get away.”

Flying in, they dashed up the stairs and down a long hall to the engineering department. A crash echoed up as the men burst into the school.

“Try to load the gun,” Steve said. “I'm going to search for weapons.”

Ducking behind some lockers, Eddy struggled with the catch. Figures the guy would fix it so only he could open it, he thought, and then it popped open. Amazed by his luck, he adjusted it and reloaded. He pointed the gun, tested the sight, and found himself aiming at Steve as he came around the corner carrying an iron bar.

Steve dodged to the side. “God, I thought you were going to spray me.”

“I got it reloaded, but the idea is to try and sneak out. I really don't want to mess with guys that dangerous.”

“If the pool is a sign, they've been favoring the basement. Let's take the top floor back to the exit stairs.”

One hall from the exit, they ran back down to the basement, grabbed a row of lockers, and sent them crashing to the floor. Then they ran back up to the top, down to the end, and down the stairs to the exit. They assumed the janitors would head for the noise, but they failed to rise to the bait. Both of them were at the doors, and the tallest guy was already swinging his ax at Eddy as he charged down the stairs.

Eddy ducked the flying blade, and Steve dodged and tumbled. There was a crash as Eddy smashed into news boxes, then a boom as his Remington shotgun misfired, and another wham as the ax followed through and bit into a service room door. Steve's metal bar bounced on the floor, and from his knees, he saw the first janitor catch the misfire blast. It got him in the upper body, kicking him right through the Plexiglas doors ... sending him into the dusty wind like a gory scarecrow spit from a monster exhaust fan.

The second janitor lifted his ax to strike, his face a hostile mass of fresh scar tissue. Steve knocked his bar as he tried to reach it, and it clanged on the steps. He heard Eddy moan, then he saw the ax coming down. Scrambling left, he managed to snatch the bar and get out of the way.

The blade glanced off the stair railing and hit the stone floor. The force of the blow staggered the janitor, and he stepped back, holding the ax with shaking hands. He growled, his scars purpling as he prepared to strike again.

Afraid to engage in close combat with such a freak, Steve simply stepped back, mustered all of his strength, and threw the bar. Gleaming, it connected with the janitor's throat, knocking him back. He staggered, choked, spat blood, and then charged, tripping over Eddy as he tried to get to Steve.

A blackened hand reached for Steve's feet. He leaped over the janitor and seized the other ax, which was still embedded in the service room door. It came out easily, but Steve was trembling so much he could barely lift it. Knee-shaking fear- the black magic of terror was crippling him. Eddy was stunned, so he knew he couldn't count on him... he had to swing and take the guy down before he got up. But he couldn't stomach killing someone with an ax. It was more like he could only tremble. Then the janitor got to his knees, and the fear turned to a power that brought the ax down on its own. It got him in the back, a gross crunch, and Steve staggered back, staring at the blood oozing up from the punctured lung and spleen.

Squirming, choking grossly, the janitor died. Eddy got to his feet and studied the carnage. He wiped tears from his eyes with a shaking hand. “I think my ribs are broken from the recoil,” he said. “Jeez, this is no gods from the future. This is brain damage, like these people fried themselves with poison or got a new strain of disease.”

“How do you explain the Dweller?”

“We don't even know what the Dweller is ... maybe he's just the ugliest of these creeps.”

Crossing the road, they went into weeds and bushes, then up on the railroad grade and looked down at warehouses and factories. Litter rattled as it spun on the stones in the lot below. The street was deserted, just a couple of abandoned cars.

“These people do no regular work, that's for sure,” Eddy said as they descended.

Steve nodded. “I have a hunch that they don't clean anything either, meaning the laundromat should be empty. We can check the square and the park from its roof.”

Weeds and long grass grew out of cracked concrete, and the wind whistled in the warehouse alley. Here, the day seemed empty, lonely enough for ghosts, and Eddy wished it really were that way. It would be nice to see Mary's ghost wandering in the dust, maybe wearing the faded red dress she used to wear.

They saw a farm truck pass up on Dundas Street and slowed. Stopping near the end of the alley, they moved up to look. People were moving down by the square, but no one was in the laundromat. Another truck passed; then it was clear, and they ran across and entered through a side door. They went out the back door, climbed onto some barrels, swung up onto the first roof, then climbed the fire ladder to the top.

The air smelled of tar, vegetables, gasoline, and corpses, and the wind gusted. They knelt near the edge and crawled through the tarred stones. Using a large air vent for cover, they looked down at the square.

“Unreal,” Eddy said. “We're watching a rerun of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, “but this remake would be better titled Invasion of the Zombie Clutzos”

The sun glowed behind the clouds, adding an eerie orange tint to the gray day. Cars were parked everywhere, but not in the proper spaces, and they were banged up. Farm trucks loaded with melons, spuds, and vegetables circled the summer open-air market - most of them parked on curbs or partway up the steps to buildings. People, all of them adults, wandered aimlessly in the market - their legs wooden and their faces blank. It was business as usual except that no one was actually buying anything. No one was saying anything either, and they paid no attention to the corpses scattered in the dirt. These were people who were deteriorating - rotting. Some still looked clean and somewhat normal, but most were at some ugly stage of decay. Clothing soiled, shirts untucked, ties askew. At least half of them had blood oozing from battered faces and untreated wounds. One woman had her bruised breasts hanging out, and the old man next to her held his false teeth in his hand. On the north side of the square, gasoline spilled across the concrete from the self-serve station, and although strong fumes were rising, no one noticed. Mayor Billy Johnson and the police chief stood near the corner of the theater steps, each holding a rifle. Blood stained the steps, and bodies blocked the entrance behind them, which indicated that a massacre had gone down during a run of a new pirate adventure flick. A larger crowd milled in the park, many of them trampling the flowerbeds by the square. The Dweller was supposed to be in the park somewhere, but the screen of trees - oaks, maples, elms, and willows - blocked their view.

“See anyone from my family there?” Steve said.

“No,” Eddy said. “And there won't be any from mine because I don't have a family. Unless it's my uncle and cousins, and they were zombies before this even happened.”

“What we're seeing makes sense in a way,” Steve said. “You likely don't see it in most zombie movies, but if you started to deteriorate, the first things you'd lose would be fine motor skills, like driving skills. Many of them have simply injured themselves in fender benders and falls and left the injuries untreated.”

“Man, they're ugly, but I guess one of the great things about being human is that it doesn't take much to turn you into a horrible piece of shit. I would never want anyone to see me like that. Maybe I should shoot myself before it happens.”

“Oh-no,” Steve said, lurching forward. “That's my father down there by the gas station - bleeding badly from the chest. I've got to get down and rescue him.” He got up, exposing himself, and it was fortunate that no one looked up at the roof.

“You can't rescue him. Think, man - that's not your father anymore. It's something else.”

“No! There are no real zombies. Whatever he has is a disease. I can get him to Toronto and treatment before it's too late.”

“How? If you go down there, they'll tear you apart. Even if you succeed, I can't let you transport an infected person to a city.”

Steve looked at the square, then back at Eddy. Wind whipped his hair, and desperation contorted his face. His hand flew to his head, thumb and index finger to his temples. He drew back. “Don't try to stop me!” he yelled, and then he ran for the fire escape.

Eddy chased him, but he ran like a champion and was down in moments. Following him further meant certain death. Eddy remembered the dream voice telling him to keep alive, and it jogged his preservation instincts. Walking back to the edge, he looked down and saw Steve running across the road toward his father. There weren't many freakos near the gas station, but several had spotted him and were turning to look.

The day was so dark now; the scene was nightmarish, much more like a dream than reality. The unreal shadows kept shifting, and he saw Steve reach his father and touch his shoulder. His father turned to face him and growled, loud enough for Eddy to hear it up on the roof. Then he was on Steve like a rabid animal, trying to sink his teeth into his neck.

Steve yelled and struggled, managing to throw his father to the ground. An army of zombies moved toward him now, but only three were close. Deciding to take a chance, Eddy lifted the Remington, took careful aim, and squeezed the trigger. Even from the roof, the blast was powerful; it took the three zombies out and carried a spray of red with it as it kicked up asphalt and went on to wound several more with a rain of gore and brain matter.

Steve was racing back now, but the sheriff and the mayor had spotted the action and were running from the theater with their rifles raised. One shot rang out, then a blue Ford suddenly careered in from a side street. Tires squealed as the driver dodged some people and parked cars. Going over a curb with a bang, the vehicle got on track and headed straight for the mayor and the sheriff, who turned and looked just as they were brutally mowed down.

Growling zombies converged on the car from all directions, and the driver had boxed himself in. He banged a couple of parked cars, then reversed out, knocking several zombies down. It looked like the vehicle was going to escape the square, then blue-faced Dan Montana stepped from behind a melon truck and took the windshield out with a rifle blast.

Blood and glass flew as the car, out of control, reversed off the road and through the front window of Bradshaw's candy store. Eddy saw a guy jump out of the passenger door. It was John Beck, a pitcher on the high school baseball team, and no doubt he'd been obeying the voice Steve had mentioned. His left shoulder was bleeding, but John managed to fire at the approaching creeps with a pistol, killing a few before he ran out of ammo. His expression went from maniacal to grim as he threw the gun and charged. He socked the first couple of creepoids hard, knocking them down, but then big Dan Montana moved in and slugged him. John staggered back, and the others were on him before he could recover.

Eddy froze; the scene sickened him. Sound bites from the growling zombies carried up to him on the wind. They tore and bit like rabid dogs. John howled, wild screams of pain, then a zombie chomped into his throat, and blood jetted from the jugular as he was silenced. They took John the rest of the way down, continuing the cannibalistic attack. They started feeding on his belly, and as one zombie pulled out a gory sausage, Eddy found himself going numb, getting a flashback of an old B-movie ... faces full of ketchup, green slime in their hair, the bleeding body writhing like a loose rag doll. A grinning zombie rose, liquid fat dribbling from his lips as he held a handful of guts pulled from the corpse. Eddy came back to reality. He lifted the Remington, locked on, and fired both barrels, a blast that kicked everyone flat to the ground.

Only meat pie and a blood pancake remained as Eddy ducked back. There was the flash of a head bouncing over a car. He peeked out again. The rest of the zip-brains didn't know where the shot came from, but now he could hear Steve yelling from below. “Motherfuckers!” Eddy yelled, and then he scooped up Steve's metal bar and went down the fire escape.

Steve was at the bottom, struggling with a huge sucker of a zombie. Moving in from the rear, Eddy swung the bar and crushed the guy's skull. He fell to the pavement like a heavy sandbag.

Eddy's eyes went to the blue face of the dead man.

“I'm okay,” Steve said. “Damn, we've attracted the whole gang.”

An army of zombies moved across the square.

“Let's get behind the gas station,” Eddy said. “If my plan works, we'll escape by way of the rooftops.”

“Roofs are the best idea,” Steve said as they ran out. “Those freaks likely aren't well enough to climb.”

Dodging the first cluster of zombies, they raced straight out into the square and turned left, headed for the gas station. A hand snatched at Eddy's shirt as he passed a parked car. He beat it back with his gun, acutely aware of the fact that he would be a goner if any of them held him for long. He led Steve wide of the spilled gas and around back. Glancing around, he saw an alley running between two warehouses on the other side of the fence.

They jumped the fence, got to a fire escape in the alley, and ran up the steps. Near the top, they halted. As Eddy had hoped, they could see over the station roof. Zombies were gathering at the front, and a huge crowd was heading over from the square and the park. A rifle shot pinged in the alley, and they ducked.

“He's right by the pumps,” Steve said. “See if you can plug him.”

“That guy couldn't hit a barn door,” Eddy said as a second shot hit wide, then he stood and fired a shot at the pumps. It took four men down and sent a severed arm to the top of the sign, but it didn't ignite the gasoline as he had hoped, and he had also missed the guy with the rifle.

More wild shots came as Eddy reloaded; he took aim again, and then a stray bullet near the pumps lit the gas. Flames leaped up silently; a hungry roar rushed with them as they grew. People near the station were instantly consumed, and the conflagration spread deep into the square, turning most of the approaching zombies into torches.

Eddy and Steve ran to the warehouse roof and away from the heat. The firestorm nearly got them, and it was fortunate that the wind was strong and in their favor. Heat seared their faces, and they ducked back farther, watching the fireworks as the pavement near the pumps rocked with a series of blasts. Flaming bodies and liquefied asphalt sailed over the station; human torches stumbled in the square. Two flatbeds and a Toyota blew up - a concatenated blast that sent flying debris ripping into several zombies and melons rocketing through what remained of the windows in Discount Mart.

There were still a lot of zombies that weren't hit full on by the blast, and they were stupefied, showing no reaction at all. Some of them were at the edge of the fire and had burned legs, hands, and faces. They should have been screaming and running, but instead they strolled, feeling no pain, not even bothering to pat out the flames on their smoking clothes.

Nearby buildings caught fire, but the warehouse was spared. The fire was shrinking back from the square, spitting out little heaps of fried bodies as it moved. Black smoke blew steadily from the pumps, and faces and windows glowed with hellish light. It was certain the wind would spread the flames, eventually destroying most of the town.

“Fire hypnotizes them,” Eddy said, turning to Steve, who was grimacing as he checked a burn and a bad bite on his arm.”

“What if I become rabid?” Steve said.

“You probably won't. They all turned at once, remember?”

“Yeah, so let's get into the park now that they're out of it. This Dweller guy is the root of this evil. We've got to find out what he is.”

Eddy led the way as they climbed down on the far side. Steve started jogging toward the square, and Eddy caught up, then stopped him. Sharp eyes were the name of the game, and he didn't want Steve dashing into a trap. Coming out of the alley, they met with a crawling corpse. Its whitened tongue protruded past withered lips; enough of the face remained for them to recognize it as Mayor Billy. He growled low and snatched at their legs.

Steve ducked back. “Looks like they will still attack.”

“He's blind,” Eddy said. “The flames didn't affect him. We'd better watch out for that.”

Zombies in the square were falling, collapsing from smoke inhalation. Cutting directly through it wasn't a good idea, so they turned and went through the market. Burst melons and spilled tomatoes squished underfoot. Chin’s Theater was ahead, and they could avoid the bitter smoke by walking through it to the back. The alley was next to Hepburn Park.

Bodies were scattered out front, mostly teenagers shot by the sheriff and his mad pals. A grim Butch Landry, holding a weapon that resembled an RPG from a computer game, looked down on the scene from a huge movie poster.

Steve covered his eyes, and they walked past and toward the entrance. “I don't want to know who they are,” he said. “It's less painful that way.”

Eddy glanced back. Dark smoke, easy shadows shifting over fire, blood, and wreckage. He knew who they were; they were everybody - extinction come true, and Steve thought men would be gods.

Shotguns had shattered the glass doors. They walked straight into the empty lobby. Popcorn crunched underfoot, and they could hear the movie playing. Eddy swung the doors, and they stepped in cautiously, seeing car-chase action on the screen and death in the seats. Bodies were draped over the rows. Eddy saw a bloody finger sticking out of a box of fries and a couple who looked like they'd been making out before a gallon of ketchup had hit them.

There was so much blood they didn't want to touch anything, and it was so unsettling they remained silent and walked to the curtains. Eddy was about to part them when light flashed on the other side. It meant someone was opening the exit door. He tapped Steve on the shoulder, then parted them a sliver and peeked through. Mary stood in the doorway, alive, and she didn't look like a zombie. Silky blond hair, blue eyes sparkling, and that old cynical look of hers, like she'd suspected everyone might be zombies all along.

She stepped back, and the wind suddenly blew the door shut. Eddy came unglued, burst through the curtains, and hit the bar handle... but it wouldn't open; the door had locked. He pounded it with his fists, then Steve pulled him away.

“You’re losing your mind! There are only zombies out there.”

“No, it's Mary! Mary's out there!”

Steve's eyes softened. “You know Mary's dead. It's just the stress, causing you to see what you want to see.”

“What I saw was too real to be a hallucination.”

“Okay, but let's not rush out there. Remember your own advice.”

Eddy tried the handle again. It squeaked but didn't catch, so he pumped it up and down and managed to open it. The wind forced it shut, so he put his shoulder to it; it flew open and banged against the side wall. Smoke rushed in with the wind, so they stepped out and covered their eyes as they jogged to the park.

Black smoke billowed in a funnel from the roof of the old post office, and the wind whipped tentacles of smoke down into the trees. The roar of the gusts and fire was frightening, but they were safe in the park where things weren't dry enough to burn. The freakos had cleared out of the park and were in the square staring stupidly at the conflagration. Eddy scanned the trees and flowerbeds, trying to catch sight of Mary, but saw no one at all. He did notice something large at the center of the park that hadn't been there before, so they headed in for a closer look.

Eddy felt lightheaded, slightly ill. Sweat and soot clung to him, and his empty stomach churned. He thought of how nice it would be to go skinny-dipping with Mary down at the canal, and the memory hit him with so much power he saw it like a mirage. He shook his head. “Maybe I am seeing things,” he said.

“I must be seeing them too, because those stones weren't there before,” Steve said.

They stopped and stared. The big oak trees at the center of the park were gone, and a huge pile of boulders stood in their place. Standing stones lined the perimeter, as if the townspeople had been building a version of Stonehenge out of shopping-mall marble.

Moving out of the trees, they circled the heap of stones and came to a cave-like entrance. At first, they saw nothing, then a patch of color flashed in the darkness.

“Somebody's in there,” Steve said.

“That was part of a woman's dress I saw. Mary must be inside.”

“No. Don't go in. It's some kind of trick from this Dweller. Once you're in there, he'll have your ass.”

“It doesn't matter. We're going to die anyway. I want to see Mary before it's too late.”

Stinging tears came to Eddy's smoke-reddened eyes. He wiped them away and ran to the entrance. Glancing back, he saw Steve wasn't following, then plunged into darkness and tripped. A rock banged his knee, and he stopped, gasping. Moving slowly, he headed down a slope toward a very faint light. The tunnel took a sudden turn, then the light brightened. The walls ahead glowed, and the floor changed to blue, almost like carpeting. Phosphor light cast the colors and patterned illusions on the stone.

A low whistle of wind in the cave caused him to shiver. He rounded a bend and came to a door. It was silver, and in place of a handle it had a heavy plate stamped with the image of a human hand. He pressed his palm to the plate, heard something click, and watched it open.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the blue lights. A cavernous room loomed beyond the door, circular with bright instrument panels, as if it were the master control room of a nuclear power plant or a spaceship. Awed by the discovery, Eddy stepped inside. Before he could look around, he heard the door shut behind him.

He turned back and shoved the door, but it wouldn't budge. Pacing the room, he looked for another exit. A narrow hall opened to the side of a tall instrument panel and led to another area. Eddy headed down it and entered a huge room. Glittering cylindrical cocoons lined the walls, and an embossed control panel was at the center. As he walked up to a cocoon, he heard a door open behind him. He turned and saw a stocky figure walking out of a haze of blue light. The being was humanoid but not human. Its body and features were lumpy and blue, its lips black and twisted. Oval eyes brimmed with alien intelligence and strange understanding, like it was a creature that felt your pain, even if it did plan to eat you.

Eddy knew this thick-skinned creature was the Dweller, but now that he'd found him, he didn't quite know what to ask. He felt only fear and mild loathing. He watched, lower lip quivering, as the Dweller grinned. Pointed teeth and a melting green mucous membrane showed. Eddy trembled as the Dweller raised a powerful arm; then, when he saw the open blue hand lined with filaments and electrodes, he raised his shotgun.

Ignoring the threat, the Dweller stepped forward and reached for the weapon.

Shaking, biting his lip, Eddy pulled the trigger.

Fire licked from the barrel. Time slowed. He saw the Dweller's hand detach itself at the wrist and float to him. A powerful grip, cold electrodes, and a paralyzing charge took him. Blinding light hit his eyes, then the flash faded, and he saw the shotgun blast connect. The Dweller's head and shoulders vanished in a nova of blue-black blood. Deadly force threw the headless body against the door, and the recoil knocked Eddy back into one of the cocoons.

Blue light shone through, cold pain making him numb. His view was from above, like in a dream. He saw the shotgun going to the floor and his body banging into a cylinder. Across the room, the Dweller's headless body was fizzing up yellow blood and mist as it melted to lumpy clay. The detached hand floated away from his head and touched the cocoon above his body. It was feebly trying to hold it shut, but it failed, and the front swung open. Mary was inside, a metal helmet fastened to her head.

Sunlight flooded in; Eddy found himself in Hepburn Park. The day was a scorcher; people were strolling by, and he saw a kite soaring above the willows. Turning, he saw Mary and looked her up and down, at the nice curve of her thighs, her red shorts, and tank top. She smiled, and they embraced and kissed. He held her, and she whispered in his ear. “I saw people in the future,” she said. “People who wanted to see the past. Do you know how they did it?”

“No,” he said, caressing her shoulder, letting her voice touch him more than her words.

“They found that they couldn't physically enter the past. But they could enter by dreams. It's the mind that is constant. Think of it - if you could enter someone's dreams, say Plato's dreams, you could learn a lot about history just from that.”

“Whose dreams did they enter?” Eddy said.

“Your dreams,” she said.

“What?” he said, pulling away from her. His vision blurred, and Mary was gone. He saw the Dweller's twisted lips and struggled, but he couldn't break free. A sharp pain told him the powerful hand had a grip on his temples.

“They entered your dreams,” the Dweller said, his voice deep and distorted. “Your dreams and the dreams of some of the others. And they made a mistake. The theory didn't work as expected. They altered history, creating several holes that must be patched.”

Eddy stared into the Dweller's wide blue eyes. “My dreams. Why me?”

“Not because of who you are now, but who you will be when you're older. History is merciless. If I do not correct it, it will self-correct in ways that are too horrible and cruel for the human race to imagine. I exist because people in the future are too kind. They can't kill even one man, as they are truly emotional beings - creatures of love. Yet one woman created me, and I am the Dweller who is not even a dream and does not exist. Brightsville is a town that I am patching. Most of the people here should not have been born, so I am destroying them. The bodies in the cocoons are a few people who died when they should have lived. Some of the survivors will remember me, and that’s why I look like a monster. When the authorities investigate the calamity here, they certainly won’t believe stories of monsters and zombies because you will tell them you believe a poison of some kind got in the town's water supply. You will remember everything because we cannot risk touching your mind at all.”

“Why should I help you?”

“Because there is no other way. Because you'll have Mary again and because a being that destroys himself as part of his work does not lie.”

“Okay, I'll do it, but I find it hard to believe there couldn't have been a cleaner way. Couldn't you have teleported the people away or used some other method?”

“No. It takes energy to speak your language, and it takes incredible amounts of energy to return a few people. I had to weed out the mistakes, so I entered their dreams and changed their reality. What you must do is close the cylinder you knocked open and then run out. I wasn't allowed to read your mind, so I made a mistake. I didn't think you would shoot me. To help me finish my work, you must see that all the town's records are destroyed. Burn any remaining churches and government buildings and destroy any identification found on the corpses. Do what you can.”

Eddy had one more question, but it never got out. Abruptly, the scene changed, and he was on his knees beside the open cocoon. The Dweller's hand slipped from his temple and fell to the floor in front of him. As it vanished in the mist, he stood up and closed the cylinder door. He took a quick look around, and then he ran to the hall and found an open passage leading up into the park.

The light blinded him; he emerged staggering, fireworks exploding in his eyes. Even the trees looked as if they were on fire. He shook and fell to one knee as his vision settled. Smoke rolled over the town. The sun was out, and Mary stood under a maple tree. She was weeping, so he ran to her and embraced her.

“It's so terrible,” she said. “Nearly everyone is dead.”

He held her tighter, caressing her. Glancing up, he saw Steve coming through the trees. “Yes, it is horrible,” he said, and she couldn't see him smile.

-- the end --

DUST DEVIL

By Gary Morton

Not so many years ago, this village of Reddersville was Iroquois land, and when I close my eyes, I can picture two dancing medicine men smudging some of the braves. The thick smoke of the sweetgrass curling around painted bodies, beads of sweat on stern foreheads, in one of those common clearings where the fragrance of decaying herbs is as strong as the bittersweet ash.

Golden grasses are rippling as the wind races off to the autumn flame of the surrounding sugar maples. And the fir trees are the arrowheads of angry spirits, piercing the amber sky. Whatever visions the medicine men have of these spirits are carried off, swirling with the leaves in a dust devil, and they spin until the most frightening warrior stands at the clearing's edge.

Twilight is a hawk returning, and when the birches are midnight ghosts, the braves are following the warrior and an avalanche of stars, hunting with the darkness . . .

... but that's when I close my eyes. The trouble starts when I open them. Then my visions are of an evil spirit. It has touched my life with a bloody hand. One of the spirit's evil deeds was a strangling, and some people thought I was the killer. The lawmen liked my profile - Owen Fairhawk, 36, half Indian, known to drink on occasion, sometimes ill-tempered, a fishing guide who works on just about any sort of temporary job, and a bachelor.

Yeah, the lawmen were eyeing me like a coyote would eye a prize turkey, but I'm not the guy they see. I see all things and accept them. I don't want to give people an indigenous utopia they couldn't appreciate, but I refuse to share their burdens and crave what their world says I need. If I can sit on a cliff, smile, and spice my dreams with memories, then kernels of gold fall from the sun, and I become as rich with feelings as the temperate forest is with its autumn coat.

I know that much of the suffering in modern life is a product of desire, and that no happiness is brewed in a cauldron of desire, but a person who desires nothing - not even a sunny afternoon - is a person who has lost the dream and made nirvana irrelevant by not desiring it above all things. Sure, there's some dark lust in my own inner nirvana, and I have my needs, but I don't let anything get a warped grip on me. I'm in control, a far cry from the wild Indian the lawmen think I am.

The evil spirit awoke about a year ago, in the summertime, striking the Reddersville area with a wave of violent deaths. Weakened by the heat wave, I was working only as a fishing guide in the breezier waters.

The day of the first killing, I was at home. I have a cottage on Beartooth Bay. It's more like half a cottage connected to a trailer, and it's an example of the kind of all-trades work I can do. I even built a small peaked roof for the trailer. But I don't care much for houses; I like the outdoors, and I spend a lot of time in my boats. My boat, Fishin' Superstition, is often booked up, but on that day, she was docked with my canoe and rowboat.

I was resting on the shore in the shade of some sumac, and I was at my best; though the heat had sapped all thoughts of work from me, it had also drained me of any desire for alcohol. The waters of the bay rippled in the sun like silk and ran from deep blue to milky blue out where the heat haze rose like a Venetian blind to hide the far shore. A row of poplars ran up to the highway on one side of the cottage, and a farmer's deadwood fence ran a zigzag course beside my drive on the other. I was fairly isolated - a fallow field lay over the fence, and it held only dense grass and weeds. Across the field, I could see the red side of Dave Burns' barn, and a cloud of dust suspended over Highway 6 where it became visible as it curved around the bay.

Blinding brilliance descended on my eyes as the sun fattened, flared, and began to set, and then a rose tint spread through the haze, giving the sky a deeper dimension. A flock of crows flew like arrows over the field and poked holes in the dust cloud. I thought of how crows always get active when the weather is about to change. Reddersville is crow country, though, and the dust cloud had unusual buoyancy that didn't spell humidity or rain.

I watched the sun fling its tongue across the horizon while dust devils began to merry-go-round by the road. My thoughts were wandering as a red station wagon came into view, then something weird woke me. A small reddish dust devil rode down and hit the car, shattering its rear windshield and forcing the driver to make an emergency stop on the shoulder.

The dust cloud mushroomed and darkened in a star pattern, and then a huge dust devil appeared and whirled in a wide circle around the car. The headlights came on, illuminating a screen of dust that resembled a TV test pattern. I got up and had to shield my eyes to block a shimmering desert-like landscape in the sunset sky. Down in the dark patch, strange faces were appearing and disappearing in the whirling dust. They were faces you would see on a totem pole or masks, similar to some of the visions artists have of Raven, Coyote, and warrior spirits, but with strong, animate expressions of howling wickedness and laughter.

Without hesitation, I ran and leaped over the fence for a better look, but as I landed in the clover, the faces faded, and the dust devil broke up. Only the larger cloud remained, a huge umbrella shading the wagon. A woman cautiously got out of the driver's door. She had naturally windblown blond hair and tanned shoulders, and she wore a light summer dress. A gust of wind revealed most of her legs as she stood behind the car, checking the damage.

I began to walk toward her, unconsciously avoiding patches of burs and nettles. I was a ways into the field when I saw her shielding her eyes and looking at something down the road. I guessed that she wouldn't see much more than glare and shadow against the blaze of the sunset.

She had feminine innocence that no doubt sent many men stumbling to her rescue. Before I could make a solid guess at her character, her features stilted with fright. Since I couldn't see what she was scared of, I quickened my pace. Whatever it was, it caused her to lean back against the car, like she was too terrified to run. With so much ground to cover, I began to sprint to her aid.

Shards of fiberglass from the windshield made jewels on the asphalt. The wind played with her dress. I had covered half the field when I saw her attacker. It was a tall column of dust, and in the swirl were mutilated half-human faces. They were like evil animal gods, long and distorted with anguish.

She screamed, and the column seemed to hear her; it halted its spin long enough to leave a tall man standing in front of her. He wore cowboy boots and torn jeans; his chest was bare except for a mat of scar tissue. Stringy black hair and stubble partly hid his sharp-featured face. It was hard to put a finger on his race. I guessed that other people might call him a gypsy for lack of a better term.

Silence fell on the girl like a shadow, and mesmerism glazed her eyes as he stepped up to her and put his hands on her neck. I yelled for him to stop, but my words were lost in a tunnel of wind. I was forced to watch him strangle her gently and then violently break her neck. A sick form of love welled in his eyes, like he was mad and had killed his own daughter. Blood came lightly to her lips, and he kissed her fiercely; then he eased his grip on her and let her fall against the car. His fangs glistened with blood as she slid to the roadside, then he just stood there and looked at his crooked hands, relishing what he'd done.

He turned to face me just as I was leaping over the ditch. He had a faraway look and an expression like he couldn't care less. He didn't even move to defend himself. I gave him a flying check, and he fell over the body and rolled on the asphalt. Giving him no chance to recover, I jumped on his chest with heavy boots and then stomped on his groin, continuing to lay heels on him until I was doing a dance on his face, wishing my feet were jackhammers so I could break every bone in his body. Then he caught my right foot and bit it hard, ending the good times.

My foot was bleeding. His teeth were razor sharp. Staggering back, I let out a howl of pain. Like a spooked pheasant, he flew up and felled me with a vicious jab to the throat. Looking up from the ground, I saw him flanked by a steep wall of twilight and that grisly column of dust. He grinned, showing his fangs, then he turned to the station wagon and started booting it. He worked his way around the car, knocking out the lights and windows. When he went to work on the doors, it sounded like a demolition derby.

Shaking my punch-drunk head, I got up and found him ready for me. He had his belt off, and I could see he planned on hammering me a couple with the buckle. The buckle was glowing red, a hot branding iron, and I could see the name DUST DEVIL traced on it in white-hot silver. Woven from snakeskin, it snapped easily like a whip, and I ended up doing a crazy dance, ducking and staggering back, trying to avoid the humiliation of being branded.

It took all of my agility, but I managed to pull a side dodge, move in, and rise with a backfist strike to the bridge of his nose - a deadly hit that should've put him out. It didn't, but I did manage to sweep-trip him before staggering back, winded.

Dust Devil rolled up fast, and both blood and smoke were pouring from his injured nose. Fury was in his eyes, then he dodged in so fast he was a blur and sent the buckle straight at my cheek.

I caught it barehanded, and it sent my whole body into fiery hell. My palms smoked and sizzled like frying meat, and my own scream seemed to come from a distance as I twisted wildly. I was strong enough to break away, but not strong enough to stay up. Smoke went up my nose as I went down.

My head spinning, I scrambled to my knees and saw a huge shadow sailing for me - it was an approaching truck. I raised my hands in a defensive gesture that could do little to save me from a future as a hood ornament.

Brakes squealed, the truck stopped inches from me, and a last beam from the setting sun spotlighted the area. I turned and glanced back, expecting to see Dust Devil jump me, but he wasn't there. The dust was gone

Dave Burns, the farmer next door, had seen me dashing across the field to the rescue, and the tourist driving the Blazer had seen a shadowy figure throw me out in front of him and disappear on the forested side of the highway. If it had been otherwise, patrol officer Jim Orland would've charged me with murder. After I told him about the supernatural occurrence and being painfully on fire without being burned, Jim cocked a cynical gray eye, pulled on his whisker shadow, and said that I wasn't a sober witness. Since Reddersville can't afford a police force, the murder case was shared by the provincial police and Orland's Mounties - the upshot of this being that it made it certain I would eventually be charged. I decided to go on a bender while I still had some free time.

There's an abandoned Starlight Inn on the Sand Hill Road near the outskirts of town, and I sleep there when I'm drinking around Reddersville. I'm a menace on the road even when I'm sober, so I left my wheels at home. It was 3 a.m. when the need sent me wandering down the roadside. I had a small pack and the pockets of my hunter's pants stuffed with supplies for my motel room. The moon had strong arms of wind sweeping the treetops, and they rustled wildly and sent an odd gust down to tear at me. The shadows went on forever, dream scenery in my mind, and for some reason, it came to me that all men are ghosts, bound to the few roads they will wander. Most men don't die; they slowly wink out. I believed myself to be stronger, like a spirit taking new faces from the earth. It is true that few men interested me then, and few men interest me now. I like women, but I've always seen men as rivals I tolerate. To me, Dust Devil was more interesting than the heroes we're taught to worship.

A week went by, as empty as roaring in a seashell. Sort of a blur. I remember smoke in my eyes and the Silver Mule Saloon's dancers, punctuated by the riverbed taste of hangovers and a harsh sun. What finally killed my thirst was some news about more murders.

A Dwight Yoakum tune that I thought was great was playing on the jukebox, and a stripper was dancing Egyptian-style for a fathead sitting in a cloud of cigar smoke at the table next to me. I thought about hitting him with a chair, and then I ignored him and looked around for some of my regular pals. Georgie was over by the door, swallowing a taco. He wiped his chops with a napkin and, on purpose, accidentally dropped it into some tourist's draft. When he spotted me, he walked over, and that's when I got the news.

"It was a very gruesome massacre," he said, shaking his braids and folding his hands with a drunk's reverence. "Up by Weller Creek, yesterday. Four fishing buddies and a French gal. She was strangled, her blood drained. They were beaten to death, heads cracked open like clams. Orland says it's the work of your Dust Devil. Guess it puts you in the clear. The case is too complex to hang on an Indian."

I smiled so broadly that one of the girls came to the table thinking I was signaling her for a dance. Feeling good about being in the clear, I got up and went out. Streaks of yellow fire rained from the sun and washed away the grime and sleaze of the hotel. I had a sort of gone feeling where I was aware of my surroundings, but everything seemed shot through with numbness, like a root stuck in cold earth. I rested on a bench by the river, and the arc of hills surrounding the village rose and fell as I drifted towards sobriety.

Withdrawal brought vivid dreams that made me shiver in the heat; then a bizarre language of feelings filled me, and I seemed to know Dust Devil's history. It almost bubbled in my mind. Dust Devil had been the only real witch during the Inquisition, and he'd used his powers to lead the men of the church to the chalices of innocent blood that damned them. As the Reformation came about, Lucifer was bounced from the holy altars, and Dust Devil became a wandering false prophet. He came through the Enlightenment in Europe with the seeds of a new racist doctrine that granted men the right to murder in the name of superiority. It filled the world with the flames of war and the smoke of death camps. As a nihilist author, he revealed that our universe was created by a beautiful act of divine suicide, God in flames. In his heart, he wished for a return to ancient days when he'd taught the art of human sacrifice. Blood had been so plentiful then.

A limestone shelf leans into the water near the abandoned motel, and it's one of my favorite fishing spots. I headed up Sand Hill Road, figuring I'd gather my few things, sit by the water until dusk, and then return home. Things didn't work out, though. The sky unexpectedly began to dim to slate, and I suddenly knew something was wrong. An ill, dusty wind began rattling through the woods, but the feeling was more than weather; it was dryness inside, too.

I could feel the wind sapping my strength as I went around the bend, and I sure didn't like it. In Ontario, the winds are nearly all energetic and exhilarating. The idea of a bad wind was something I hated. Bad winds belonged in Europe, where Dust Devil belonged.

The motel stood out like the last long house, its shingles warped to bark, struggling to remain intact against a background of wind-kicked forest, cold light, and boulder-shaped clouds. A Mustang was angled off the drive with one front tire half up the trunk of a fallen poplar. No one was in the car or near it, and there was a sense of everything being wrong, but maybe right for an evil being.

A zigzag formation of dust devils skated down from the treetops, whirligigged like tops, and made angry insects out of the litter carpeting the front of the hotel. I felt my scalp lift, and then a scream rose from the bottom of an invisible canyon. Wood burst to splinters, and a body crashed through one of the boarded-up windows. It was a man, and he landed and rolled between two dust devils. He rose to his hands and knees, and his face was like a smashed strawberry. One of his eyes hung from the socket, and the other was swollen shut. He moaned in a sort of hopeless agony, then he took a pistol from his belt, put it to the side of his throat, and squeezed the trigger. A gust of wind sprinkled the nearby trees with blood drops, and he collapsed on his side. Dust whirled into him; his burial had already begun.

I took off over a patch of spongy earth, the idea of getting the gun fueling me. A teenage girl had dashed out the open front door. Her jeans were torn, and one side of her head was shaved, but she'd likely done that for fashion. Blood was thick on a jagged incision at the top of her forehead; someone had tried t her. She ran, flailing her arms and screaming into the cruel wind. Since she was so thin, she looked weird running, like baggy clothes blowing in the wind. Her hysteria didn't take her far before Dust Devil stepped out of the motel and used some of his power to slow her to a stop.

He didn't seem to see me at first, and I felt confident with the gun I had picked up. It was a Ruger pistol, and as I lifted it, Dust Devil caught the motion in the corner of his eye. He turned, his concentration broken, and the girl began running again as I took aim.

Dust Devil's thin lips showed white with rage through his shadow of whiskers, and his eyes were chunks of backlit red glass. Smoky dust streamed from his windblown hair. "You," he said in a whisper that was carried to me on the wind. "The loco reincarnation."

He took a gunslinger's step toward me. I didn't feel like screwing around with him, so I pulled the trigger, placing a bullet right between his eyes. His head exploded, a geyser of flaming magma, and he took another step toward me, headless.

My jaw went slack, and my scalp lifted as a dust devil arced out of the woods and landed on his shoulders. Slowly, it compacted into another head above the gore and lava running down his shirt.

His neck was a mass of scar tissue, but his features were unchanged, and he smiled cruelly. He pulled a hunting knife from his belt and ran his finger along the blade, taking his time as a way of making my blood run cold. I fired again, and this time his skull shattered as shards of brilliant glass flew. A third slug winged his knife, and it flew like a dart into the trunk of a tree.

A howling rose on the wind. Headless, he held his arms up to the sky. A column of smoke shot up from his neck. I covered my face to block the stinging dust, then the wind whooped and knocked me over with a big hand.

The blow calmed as quickly as it had risen, and I sprang up. Dust Devil was still smoking, a fork of lightning struck him, and a new head glowed on his shoulders. This time, I tossed the gun away, mainly because his new head was a twin of mine, and I was afraid voodoo would happen if I put a bullet in it.

He ran for me like a hungry animal, and I side-dodged him and clapped his back to send him face-first to the ground. When he sprang up, I landed my best punch in the nose, only to find his head was like hard rubber.

A series of moves followed, and in some ways, he was a clumsy fighter. He didn't know the weak points like I did. I went for the solar plexus, the balls, the calf, the temple, and the neck, while he relied mainly on brute force. Things degenerated into a flurry of bad punches, and I busted his teeth and ripped my knuckles raw; then my legs were taken out from under me, and we rolled and pounded on one another like screwball robots. After about an eternity, I broke free, somersaulted to my feet, laid a few boots to his face, and jumped back before he could chomp on my foot again.

He leaped up, and a thousand masks fell from his face to the dust like skins from a snake. We stared each other down like predators, and a million years fell out of his angry eyes and roared through me with the fury of fire and wind. Ancient memories returned. I knew why he hadn't slaughtered me like the rest; I was as old as him, a loco reincarnation and a coyote just like he said. The delusions he'd helped give this age weren't in me for him to claim me as his; I would forever be a renegade Indian and beyond his grasp.

I said before that I see all things and accept them. I accepted Dust Devil then, just like I would've accepted any other beast. He saw that I knew and backed off a step. Then I grinned through split lips, slapped the grit off my thighs, and walked away into the dusk, knowing he wouldn't follow. With death over my shoulder and another wheel of time ahead, I saw a vision, and it went from ashes to ashes and rose from the dust again.

-- the end --

Vampire Alley

By Gary Morton

Dark cumulus castles in the sky appeared as a startling new dimension on a flat slate of sky. The strength of the approaching winds showed in the roiling smoke of the cloud bank. Down at the bottom of the bluff, frothing swells toppled in, spinning spray high over jagged rocks. If Steve were sensible, he would've been in the shelter with the others, waiting for the dragon tail of hurricane Zeno to whip past. But he wasn't in command of his faculties; depression had sent him out wandering in the blow. Thoughts of Mina and Danny were on the leading edge of the inner storm.

Danny had always been a monster - a blond monster. Steve understood that now. Danny's human mask was unusual; he came disguised as a gift-giver. Giving you anything: his old jeans, T-shirts, leather jackets, surprise cases of beer, CDs, and more expensive items. The catch being that he wasn't at all generous. Steve had thought that in the beginning, and if they weren't pals, he would have always been fooled. Danny's goal was to own people. His heart was as hollow as his eyes. He was the sort of guy who'd buy a coffin to bury you in so he could feel he possessed you and your soul.

A kick of wind puffed Steve's nylon windbreaker, and he thought he understood the wish of Icarus - to escape and fly above the hordes who only wished to crawl on their bellies. People in Toronto lacked wishes; mainly, they were too uninspired to fly. Of course, everyone was into self-development these days, everything from weight lifting to New Age stuff, but only for vanity, image, or financial gain. And since the inner self was granted no real value on its own, it never really got developed. People were getting to be like gasoline - all additives and no substance. Steve believed the truth was in the core of a person, in the heart, so if you had a heart, the rest of life would fall into place. He felt he was born with an even spirit. Most people were trying to regain what they had lost, and because they didn't know it, they were going about it in the wrong way.

Danny had a totally different philosophy of life. His one great need was to do everything better than Steve. He had firmer pectorals, his eyes were bluer, his clothes were sharper. You would expect his woman to be superior, but that wasn't the case. Like other men who consider themselves studs, Danny had predatory instincts. Ultimately incapable of love, he believed himself a great lover. He was one of those guys who would explode with violence when the day of rejection forced a final confrontation with inadequacy. In the present, the predator's blood lent him the desire to possess Steve's woman, and in turn possess him through the theft of his virility.

Danny had stolen Mina, calculating his every move with the coldness of emotion only a robber planning a Brinks job could own. Bubbling conversation, flowers, and gifts, he whirled her through the best social circles, taking advantage of her love of dancing. He molded himself from clay to become Mina's dream lover ... and he wasn't genuine at all. Steve saw warped desire and a faceless hunger behind the masks. The job was thorough; he'd put Steve on the bluffs, firm in his decision to end a game he could neither win nor stand to play.

Skeletal forms mixed in the shadows, racing before the storm like dark ink … the vision had grown stronger in his subconscious with every new day of failure. Inside were symbols of a life of remorse, bitter years suspended on a wish that yesterday might've been different. A line of blood-red showed in a sudden cloud split, and he saw it like he saw Danny's face - an evil god bleeding on all of the things it possessed. Then he jumped and flew, the wind ballooning in his windbreaker. The upward surge of the air was incredible, but not potent enough to halt his plunge to the sand and rocks below. Steve expected his life to flash before him, but it didn't happen. A black grid unfolded in his head; time stretched beyond the limits. Rivers of light exploded as several versions of him swung down toward the rocks on several alternate worlds.

He saw the pocked beach blast up to meet him like stony knuckles of a new demon - one much larger than ancient idols. A blow beyond feeling hit him, intense like a rose of blood bursting in a universe of dark matter. Fire in his flesh that left him scorched and numb, then the curtain of death and a dark, empty place swallowed him.

The roar of rushing waters, a steady and eternal sound, touched his ears. Scarlet, fluorescent waves washed over his thoughts. By small degrees, a cloud was lifting, one storm passing to make way for another. A weird duality of mind was present; he knew he had died - the version of himself on several worlds had hit the rocks. Some sort of crossover had happened, and his mind was living in the body of the Steve who had escaped death and oblivion. It was like a delusion, an unreal thing that he couldn't shake loose, and the reason for his survival loomed like a hideous shadow.

Hypothermia and blood loss had done their work; he was freezing and numb. Tendrils of unendurable pain were spreading through him. His bloodshot eyes opened; through sand-crusted lids, he saw a picture worse than grim.

Plastic straws were embedded in a heap of broken driftwood logs. A carp's head stared, its gutted body dripping on a jagged rock. A car engine hung broken from the side of the sandstone bluff. Wreaths of broken pine boughs ornamented with dead gulls and crows covered the sand. Steve shuddered, but it was emotional, not physical.

He wasn't capable of anything physical, not with what was left of his body. He could see his open stomach spread before him.

The most terrible fact in the universe was the fact that he wasn't dead. There was also the certain knowledge that he would live. He would heal because in this alternate world, he knew he was immortal and a vampire. He’d landed dead in all worlds, but in this world, some of the dead lived.

It was a deadly fusion; the predator in him resented this new, more human Steve and longed to remain in control ... and the predator was content in the knowledge that Steve would endure the agony of healing.

Hissing and blood came to his lips; a rasp of anguish passed his fangs. His intestines were gathering snakelike before him in the sand. Blood was rising and pooling, lung tissue was palpitating, and bits of flesh were crawling. Raging pain took him as the healing progressed. The torment became wailing that slowly melted into thoughts. He felt like a fool who'd set himself on fire, only to awaken with nerves burning with a blaze that would never end.

Although his suffering took place in a brief time period, it was more than any feeling being could withstand. A ghost sledgehammer moved in his torso, and nerves burned down to the ends like wicks into wax as his flesh warmed. His mind emerged, hatching from a womb of black thoughts, and the memory of the incident was much less vivid than the reality. He was filled with cool fire.

In two ways, he'd been crushed; emotionally and physically. Now the knowledge of his vampirism threatened him spiritually. Hopeless as the situation was, the awareness of having died and lived served as Novocain to deaden remorse, self-pity, and the shock of changing worlds.

Sweat showered from him as he got to his knees and looked at his hands. His T-shirt was shredded; his chest hair was flecked with blood, and scar lines shifted from blue to white as they faded. His jeans were torn at the knees, so that except for his moccasins and beads, he resembled a frame from an Incredible Hulk comic. Powerful feelings were returning like a diamond of energy burning in his chest, growing stronger as an inner vampire resurfaced.

Cracked slate clouds slid across the sun, and beams like shards of bronze bit at his eyes. He squinted, but his vision was clear enough for him to see a dark shape flying down at the bluff-top. It arced out, trailing strings of light, thumped the sand with heavy boots, and tumbled and rolled erect. It was Vince, and he clicked his cowboy boots and grinned behind ragged wisps of dark hair.

Three more figures leaped from the top, and a few moments later, Steve was facing four men in the sand.

Danny's fangs sparkled like a TV vampire; he wore a halo of arrogance, and his thin blond whiskers had a girlish transparency. He spoke first, his tone mocking: “Lying around on the beach in a hurricane, Steve.” His lips formed a cruel razor. “Next time you screw up my plans for Mina, I'll toss you in the grid instead of on the rocks.”

“Let's drop the infighting and move,” Vince said. “If the grid's been knocked out, we're headed for the big time.”

“All right, grid mission impossible here we come,” Danny said, and then he whooped like a crazy teenager, slapped his knees, and flew straight up, a power of transvection carrying him to the weed-tufted bluff-top. The others weren't as able, and they followed him up, leaping from hold to hold on the sheer embankment. Tagging along reluctantly, Steve wondered if the others really intended to challenge the grid.

An aggressive dash through thistle-spiked crabgrass and over piles of boulders took them to the pinnacle and a view of the territory. To the south, the gray lake was a debris-flecked carpet stretching to the city. The city tower stood far enough off to appear as a big needle impaling a ring of smoke. More greasy smoke clouded the skyscrapers of downtown Toronto. Fires burned in the aftermath of the hurricane, but since fires were always smoldering there in the blood zone, all was normal.

A glance east should've sent their hands to their eyes, fending off light dazzles from the big lasers that fired the inner ring of the grid, but the huge silver lattice wasn't there in the sky. They saw pleasant gloom, and it meant power outages had knocked out the grid. Silence was their reaction, Steve being the only one not swallowed by amazement. When the others began to whoop and shout with joy, he followed suit, jumping up highest of all.

Right out on the edge, Danny gave the city the finger. “Once we cross that grid, we're going to screw the whole world. We'll take the car.”

Steve didn't care much for Danny's gross gesture or his apish power trip, but he said nothing as they went to get the car. It was a battered red Ford convertible, and they descended to the highway in it. No traffic existed this far out, and they knew any vehicles they encountered would be military or mercenaries.

The grid was the military's line of containment for the vampires. It held back a plague of vampirism that had started when the vampire blood cells escaped from a lab. Infected people became either vampires or bloodless ones - walking corpses without red blood cells. In this world, this area was a rubble heap populated by vampires, the bloodless ones, military, Red Cross personnel, and criminals shipped in by various governments.

Undesirables from many countries were dumped as food for the vampires. It was illegal, of course, but international law meant little when corrupt military leaders could exploit the people and their fears.

The highway fanned out to several new lanes ending at the grid. Danny assessed that the military would move in strongly there to guard against vampires breaching the checkpoint. Well before the apron, they turned down a stony cutoff and headed north with scudding clouds. Gusting wind dried the narrow highway and kicked up grit. The road shrank to two ruts in a weed bed. A farmhouse and barn stood like heaps of overgrown rot just off the roadside, driveways running up to them like paths to burial mounds. Farther on, what had been modern homes and bedroom communities were now rows of splintered boxes on the hillsides.

A thin fringe of sumac, birch, and deer forest was the last cover before the grid lands. They ditched the convertible there, its flaking paint giving it the appearance of a natural wreck. Green foliage swirled overhead as they set out on foot, then nature faded into the smoke of the sky. Trees were suddenly stark and shattered, and the ground was napalm-ashen. Mutant toadstools were the survivors, and their spores blew out to the fields of the grid. Pylons towered, crackling sparks across discs and a metal framework that looked like a cross between the rides at a fair and man-on-the-moon technology. A smell of ozone was in the air; the lasers had been snuffed, and chaotic sparking meant most of the other devices weren't working either. Yet even in such a degraded state, the grid loomed like the skeleton of an electric dinosaur ... and they knew there were other things - silver mines, death rays, killer magnetic fields, and acids.

It brought them to an awed halt, Vince and Jimmy spinning on their heels to face the others in the blowing dust. All of them had moon-big eyes. The grid sure looked unbeatable, like it was the king of vampires.

Steve's lips remained drawn, thin, and white. Danny drew a red kerchief over his mouth and stared into the ghosting dust with a fiend's intensity. This was all a put-on; Steve was sure of it. Mina was the object of Danny's desire. She was back in the city, a Red Cross worker at one of the medical fortresses there, treating the bloodless ones.

Once across the grid, there'd be no coming back, so that meant Danny was only here to prove himself. The others wouldn't go into the grid through any courage of their own; the first laser flash, and they'd retreat. All Danny was going to do was step farther into the fire, reaffirming his position of mastery.

“We'll file in. I'll take the lead,” Danny said.

Scarlet earth resembled patches of blood under the skeletal shadows of the towers. The ground seemed more ersatz than real. Lines of dry red powder created dust. The air was electrified and snapping with static, crackling over their heads, sounding like weird guitar riffs and feedback.

Steve wasn't far off Danny's heels, and he saw his hair shoot up, Van de Graaff stiff. He could feel it himself, a crawling mesh of electricity turning body hair to wire. Dust sheeted into him, and he couldn't quite tell if his skin was on fire, frozen, acid-burned, or just plain numb.

Mirror-bright twinkling forced sudden yelps from all of them. Steve thought the lasers had come back on, and then he realized it was bits of dust exploding in his eyes. A glance at his hand showed flesh being eaten from the bone. Turning, he checked Mike, who was immediately behind him - his face was ravaged, boiling fat glistened on red char. An understanding of the grid grew in Steve's mind. It was a conglomeration of disruptors that disintegrated vampiric cells. Chemical dust, acids, and electric fields softened the body for vaporization by the lasers.

Danny suddenly whipped around, his eyes glazed like melting glass, his face nearly a skull behind the kerchief. “I'm melting, damn it!” he choked. “We'll have to go back, or we'll be disintegrated.”

“I'm going to get through,” Steve said.

The others had already been turning away. They looked to Steve, then to Danny, who was stuck with no option. If Steve proved more daring, he'd lose the respect of his men. In a pack of predators, that meant they'd turn on him and do a ritual killing. Maybe cut off his head and stuff his mouth with silver.

A sudden ear-popping thrum gave Danny an out.

“Silver mine!” Vince yelled as lifting silver closed over Mike like the petals of a molten flower. The liquid hit with a scorching hiss, and Mike lifted his arms, throwing up a plume of fire and distortion. Razor ribbons of silver twisted on his body, and when he screamed, spritzing blood, the flesh of his throat and lips and silver steam arced high, spattering the dust with color.

An eyeful was enough. Danny and the others fled, looking like a collection of grim reapers trying to save themselves from the death they already were. The voltage of fear hit Steve so hard he was sure he'd been scalped by lightning. He leaped to Mike and threw him over his shoulder in one fluid motion, and the touch of the silver froze him in his tracks.

Gummy flesh dripped. The smell was as putrid as it was acrid. He wanted to run with the body, but he couldn't when his legs were disintegrating. Drawing on a reserve of vampire strength, he transvected, and they both flew, arcing through the billowing dust, trailing greasy melt that sizzled and smoked like snuffed candles. They came clear of the grid, going right into a wall of agony that was the beginning of healing.

A fuzzed glow of sun hung like a red badge in the colored haze of the west, and another fire was fading in Steve's brain. Darkness was arriving as a comforter, cooling sweat to dew. Steve sat up, finding himself buck-naked on the flatbed of a pickup. Mike lay beside him, still far from healed; burn tissue was bubbling, blood coagulating. A webbing of deep scars pulsed. Steve's own body was covered with patches of flaking skin, but doing well. Someone had thrown clean clothes beside them, so he dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, and a T-shirt. He could scarcely believe that they'd made it out of the grid.

He popped down to the street, and the unmistakable death stink of the city filled his nostrils. A rat scurried at his feet, so he booted it, sending it away in a hissing hurry. He was out front of The Saloon, a C&W bar. Rodeo Boys was the band on the faded bill. As he turned to go in, he saw a bony blond woman coming up the street. She was pale with a blade-sharp nose and eyes sunken into shadow. Her look was that of a vampire, but blood instinct told him she was an uninfected addict, just dumped in by the military.

Her hollow cheeks were a turn-off, but his erection still ground painfully into his jeans. She didn't appear frightened by his garish complexion, which was amazing.

“I was told to come here,” she said. “You know what I need.”

Steve knew what she'd get, too. He nodded, and she followed him inside. Several bribed soldiers and mercenaries sent them fresh convicts, mainly because fed vampires were easier to control.

It was a barnlike room, beer tags and banner ads festooning the high, polished beams. Bright light poured down from an empty stage, and some patrons sat in the smoky haze. The jukebox was playing a country song. It was too early for a crowd.

Steve's gang was farthest from the lights. They were the boys with nuclear acne, their animated, burned faces demonically radiant.

Danny was alone at the end of a long shuffleboard bar, head cast down, chewing on his failure. Steve was unable to suppress a satisfied grin. Danny couldn't accept his own lack of balls, and fear of losing Mina and power was likely eating at him. No one could have sympathy for Danny. His motives stank. He wanted Mina because he thought it would be nice to have a gal helping him slaughter and rape.

It was something that Steve wouldn't consider for himself. He'd lost Mina in this world, too. At the very least, he wanted to know he hadn't lost her to Danny again.

Mina, maybe he could save her by killing Danny and his fixation, but this burned-out lady, he couldn't help. She was in the lion's den and the fiery furnace. Two big black cowboys rose from a table near the stage, putting the fade on Steve's grin. Since they were visitors here at The Saloon, it was out of order for them to move in on the blood supply when Steve was her escort, so it meant a fight.

Vince turned suddenly, wearing an unreal face of scorch and stubble. A sixth sense woke Danny, and he spun around on his stool, sizing up the situation with blood-glazed eyes. Danny didn't like what he saw. He swept his glass of beer off the bar, and it smashed on the floor. The black vampires halted, halfway to Steve, their eyes flaring beneath their hat brims, and they didn't back off. Their lips twisted into snarls that meant they were hungry enough to fight.

Danny looked to Vince and Rico. “Our hospitality has been abused. Kill them!”

The moment was tenuous as Vince clearly didn't want to obey Danny, but in the end, the drift had to go Danny's way. The turf had to be defended.

Rico unsheathed a Trail Master knife, and Vince drew out the Intruder Bowie he kept on a magnet under the table. Momentarily off balance, the blacks glanced at Steve and then back at Vince, who was flying to his feet. Overhanding his chair with cruel speed, Vince busted it to pieces across the empty table beside him.

Faced with the possibility of all of them rushing to fight over the woman, Steve seized her and sent her flying marionette-style across the floor. She went stumbling into a dim corridor that dead-ended at the men's room and fell against the wall.

At the same time, Vince leaped up, doing a high flip that put him on thundering heels directly in front of the black vampires. The violators moved into defensive posture, knives at ready, and the cooling fire in their eyes said they knew they'd made a very big mistake.

A close knife fight began, with Vince parrying them back while Rico moved up. No one was faster with a blade than Vince, and he countered a lunge by severing a hand clean at the wrist and throwing a solid boot to the groin. Vince also knew enough to duck, a move that left Rico with blood on his face.

Steve wasn't needed, so he kept back. Tables crashed over, flesh ripped, and blood splashed up to inkblot the ceiling; the battle was turning into a dance of dismemberment and blood loss. Since the trespassers were well under heel, their fate would be to dangle from a rope and spar outside The Saloon, minus their arms and legs.

Danny had kept back, and with no one looking, he made a hunched dash for the dazed girl. Steve caught the action from the corner of his eye. She was up and looking for a way out, but Danny raced from the shadows before she could move. He swung the blade so fast it glinted sickle-like in the air. It connected, cut into her throat, and the strain showed on Danny's face as he threw his weight behind it and opened a deep wound. An expression of surprise was frozen on her face as her head lolled back, almost severed. There was a fountain of blood, and drops rained on Danny's face as he leaned over and sank his fangs into the wound.

He held the quivering corpse with a firm hand, sucking blood and making noises like he was pulling bubbles through a straw.

The job was almost finished on the trespassers; they were down in pools of their own blood, and Vince was busting heads open with a chair leg, just for fun. Steve went over behind the bar and got two coils of rope for the hanging. He wasn't worried about Danny, not anymore. Once the others found out he'd spoiled their fun with a quick, greedy kill, they'd probably hang him too.

A yellow apron spread from the bright electric sign out front of The Saloon. Farther down, the street trickled with sewer water, and shadows crept with other repulsive things in the gutters. Danny's face was garish, puffed with bruises and boils that moved under the skin as they healed. Sweat glistened on his forehead, his lips were lime-white behind dirty stubble, and his eyes burned faintly in a flares-at-the-bottom-of-the-river way. If his thoughts weren't underwater, they were underworld.

Steve puffed on a counterfeit Lucky Strike, watching Danny dangle on the rope. Steve's thoughts grew ugly, his brow stormy. He was considering Danny's fixation on Mina and what he'd have to do about it.

Wind moaned and wood creaked as a gust rocked the black vampires on their pole. The raw meat of their faces was neon-enhanced like steak under a counter. They were minus limbs but still had their hats propped on above eyes gone lifeless and milky from the silver dust filling their bellies.

A midnight church bell tolled mournfully at the heart of the city, carrying a painful image of a cross. Scattered panes of light twinkled, some high up, making the buildings seem to float in the sky. Deep black squares made up the skyline, defining it in the same way missing teeth define a mouth. This was a city of darkness with a few blazing areas of military and medical activity.

The setting matched his vengeful thoughts, and Steve felt his mind sink into an evil quagmire. The rot would be inside him soon; he'd lose his human qualities and surrender to beastliness. Tonight was the only night he had. He flicked his smoke away and went over to cut Danny down.

Steve had a flask of blood, and he poured it down Danny's throat. It brought about swift and vile healing, and soon he was glancing around … somewhat hunted, somewhat bitter. A drummer was warming up, and a raucous din was rising in the bar.

Danny's mouth twisted; it was arson-ugly as he studied the doors. Like a revelation, his focus snapped back, and he stood up, a cross between Billy the Kid and a sick puppy, confusion and anger welling in his eyes.

The time was right for Steve to follow through with his plan; he went ahead, and Danny swallowed it. By one a.m., they were near the waterfront.

A narrow, makeshift road showed on the other side of a tumbled expressway. Walled by twelve-foot heaps of broken concrete and rusty metal and scattered with skeletons, it was called Vampire Alley. The name is rooted in the fact that convicts and other exiles traveled it into the city after being dumped from the boats. Usually, hungry vampires slaughtered them before they got out of the alley.

It was empty tonight, no victims. From the rubble heap, they looked over at the medical buildings. The entire waterfront strip was a blistering of light, a belt of life at the foot of a fallen city. A solid wall of laser tanks and armored vehicles guarded the area, and specially armed soldiers were streaming on the access roads. Fresh-blood civilians were also out. They could hear piano notes and a sax. Strains of a jazz band played in the waterfront square. A smoke-blackened Tower soared above them and the scene. Cut out of darkness by the spotlights, the tower was a sleeping monster in a city of devils - the only being big enough to sleep at night when the vampires had full powers. Steve figured the vampires could defeat the military if they used weapons. It was a good thing that vampire machismo worked the way it did - a vampire with a gun was considered to be a coward.

“It's that small squat compound,” Danny said. “My sources say Mina's been working there for a while.”

“How well guarded is it?”

“A couple of mercenaries and a security system. Mina and a few other medical people are the only fresh blood there. No vampires will go near the place; the doctors are treating bloodless ones in the last stages of the disease - that's the point where they can only live on by devouring vampire cells. They're horrible, mindless zombies, but they can still suck the life out of you.”

“Have you tried to get in before?”

“No. I didn't want to go it alone, not with those bloodless zombies in there.”

At the end of Vampire Alley, the rubble heaps bristled with sharpened stakes. A booby-trapped field was on the other side. Silver razor wire ran through it like tinsel; pits lined with punji sticks, laser traps, dismemberment bombs, and other nightmarish things dotted the ground. Spying from behind the rocks, they could see soldiers moving in the moonlight on the far side of the field. They were wearing protective gear and knew how to get through the hazards.

A bad odor was on the lake breeze. It touched their lungs like fingers of moist clay, and it was a toss-up as to what caused it. Maybe dead fish or bloated corpses floating out on the waves like schools of whales.

Blood fragrances, smoke, and some of the fine odors of the old life were woven in with the stench, so that both Steve and Danny stared at the shifting crowd in the square with longing in their eyes. They felt like nasty boys who could never get back into the dance of life, and because of it, rage was growing inside.

They had one option - the sewer, and they followed the dark hole underground with great reluctance. Although they could see in the dark, they wished they couldn't. Poisoned rats chattered madly as they dashed through the sludge, their fur spotted with running sores. They retreated at the scent of the vampires, hordes of them snarling and spitting from ledges. The water foamed and deepened, carrying filth over their boot-tops, and the wisps of gas thickened until the air was greenish and poisonous.

Ordinary mortals would die just from the crawling of their flesh, but vampires couldn't die, so they pressed through as swiftly as possible.

When they reached what they hoped was the right place, they used night strength to pop off a welded metal cap and emerged into a field of thistles and goldenrod. Dripping with slime and steaming, they looked more like swamp things than vampires. Yet they felt good, being suddenly exhilarated by the fresh air. Big military spotlights flashing nearby put a damper on their enthusiasm. Keeping low, they moved into wind-slithering grass and got past a guard tower. Finding cover in some brush, they stayed out of view as they leapfrogged along a ditch to the medical compound.

Wetting his finger, Danny stuck it into the wind.

“Wind's off the lake. Can't you smell?” Steve said.

“I want to be sure those bloodless things aren't catching our scent.”

More like a prison than a hospital, the concrete building stood before them. The front had grass, willows, and flowerbeds. The entrance was security-gated. A gravel lot filled with military and medical supply trucks surrounded the rest of the structure. A few lights were on in windows that resembled the gun slits in the tanks. A blinding spotlight rotated on the roof, the beam following a programmed pattern over the grounds.

Ducking the beam, they moved around the compound and decided to break in at a back door they believed led to the kitchen and mess hall. Quicker than any cat burglars, they ran up and pounced on the door, prying the hinges out of the concrete with their fingers. They tried to throw it down gently, but the heavy metal door slipped and crashed into the gravel. No alarm sounded, so they went in and down a narrow hall, coming to a room stacked with drums of the gross mush the bloodless ones ate. They knew they had to go up a floor to get to the staff area and Mina, so they took the stairs. Danny cursed and spat when he found the only exit to be three flights up. The damn place was a security maze, designed to keep the bloodless ones inside.

A positively eerie feeling took them as they began to move down a shockingly bright fourth-floor hall. A huge door was at the end. It was metal with rivets and had a small meshed Plexiglas window.

Marching into the lead, Steve halted and gazed through the window. Unclean figures moved in the dim light, their motion aimless and zombielike. A head turned, a gross caricature of the living dead, oozing pus and milky slime from a skinless but whiskered face. Splintered bone made a crude nose below eyes that were black with paranoid horror.

Danny had gladly stayed back, but now he was edging over for a look. “Get back!” Steve suddenly whispered, pulling Danny away before he could glimpse the monsters.

They crouched a ways back from the door. “There's a guard near the window. I don't want to tip him off. Mina is the only other person inside. I saw her working at a medical desk by the window.”

“Has the guard got a laser?”

“No, he appears to be one of the goons they use for strong-arming the bloodless ones. Guess he's off duty right now. He probably has a weapon in there somewhere. We can rush him before he gets it. I'll take another peek, and if it's clear, I'll pull open the door so you can leap in and overpower him.”

“Sounds good to me,” Danny said, lusty-eyed with thoughts of things he might do to Mina. “Let's do it.”

Easing the door back a crack, Steve worked at the bolt and its casing. Concrete broke away, and he tore some flesh off his fingers before he managed to bend the metal. Gripping the handle, he signaled Danny with his left hand. One finger, two fingers, then a wave that meant go. The bolt whammed and snapped free of the casing as Steve jerked the door wide. And Danny sprang, whooping Indian-style as he flew into the room. Then the door slammed behind him, and Steve bent the bolt and casing back together as he held the door shut with his shoulder.

Danny's whooping died in a gag of silence and came back up as a scream. A maniacal mix of fright and loathing was in its tones. The low moaning of the bloodless ones began, wanton and hideous. Hissing with stark terror, Danny threw himself against the door. He hit it with hinge-shaking force, but Steve held it fast, glancing through the window at Danny's clawing hands. The Plexiglas was smeared with blood, and perhaps Danny was seeing the face of his death in the pattern. It would be immortality melting to bodily fluids, because immortality had always been make-believe. The fates hadn't surrendered their role as executioners at all.

There was no need to look again; Steve could picture it well enough. As Danny screeched and struggled, the bloodless ones were on him like vile leeches, using a gruesome power of osmosis to suck the red blood cells right out of his body. In the end, immortality would be splintered, marrow-less bones and rot on the floor.

Steve ground his teeth, but his blood refused to boil. Revenge was no pleasure at all. Instead, he felt cold and hollow inside. It wasn't really like being a killer; it was more like being Father Time, exterminating vermin that had been crawling around too long.

Steve felt somewhat cold and dead himself. The sounds sickened him. Drawing away from the door, he wondered what to do next. He hadn't expected the trap to swallow Danny so easily and so quickly. His plans had been more romantic; he'd hoped they'd get to Mina first so she could see him finish Danny and know he'd saved her.

Footsteps rang in the hall. Steve spun around. Once again, he found fate to be ahead of him. It was an orderly in white and Mina, wearing a nurse's smock. They weren't armed and must have assumed the noise typical of the disturbances created by the bloodless ones.

Catching sight of Steve, they froze in their tracks. Steve also went rigid, awed by Mina. Her golden curls were beautiful, her face open and rosy. The scent of her blood and perfume was an aphrodisiac he couldn't resist for long. He felt the pain of lost love sinking in his heart, and he wanted to speak - just to say something human. Anything at all, but he couldn't, so he just stood there with trembling hands.

The orderly acted first. Showing despicable cowardice, he turned and fled, banging through a stairwell door.

A tear formed in the corner of Mina's eye, and he saw her knees weaken. Perhaps she was weeping because she had loved him; his heart leaped at the thought. Then he saw the lines deepen on her face, the depths of her fear, and the truth was obvious. Mina didn't even recognize him; he was a hideous creature from some slimy underworld, and she wept at the thought of the fate she was sure awaited her.

Mina's lips quivered; she was too scared to scream. And she didn't have to; Steve walked up, turned, and went into the stairwell. He hoped she hadn't noticed the tears in his eyes. That way, she would never guess his identity. This was another world and another Mina, and he'd been hiding, refusing to admit that he'd died. The game had ended on home Earth when he'd followed through on his decision to jump. Death was the only answer he could ever have.

Laser beams sliced the night over the alley, and from the top of the rubble heap, Steve could see the vampires running in the shadows below. The alley was a tunnel of night, fear, ecstasy, and a huge vein channeling creatures of evil and lust. The last figure to fade was Vince, and then he saw the bloodless ones, a crowd of them, driven by hunger and the soldiers at their rear. With their crumbling flesh and hollow bones, they belonged to the alley. Steve felt he belonged there, too; he was a proper citizen of death row, and he felt the rage take him as he hissed and leaped down among the soulless zombies.

He went wild, tearing rotted arms from their sockets, and he wasn't cowering or weakening as they'd expected. The soldiers retreated, leaving him with the creatures, and he was afraid he wouldn't die as he'd hoped. Then he grinned because he knew there was always the grid … and certain death.

-- the end –

Renewal

By Gary Morton

Gary Jones used his toes to propel himself to the other side of the barrier, and as he opened the heavy fiber door, a small pile of gray dust exploded and smoked across the signal grid. It faded, leaving an empty rooftop scene of metal dishes and generators. Warm spring wind swept over the railing, and with collar and sleeves flapping, he strolled to the edge.

Gripping the cold tubing, he watched electric cars the size of specks race by on the streets below. From this height, the jumble of domes and skyscrapers looked like building-set pieces of glazed steel, plastics, and glass - endless depth and panorama that sucked one closer to the edge and closer to jumping.

He doubted you could ever leap free of it. The white ships of cumulus clouds higher up were simply unreachable. Gravity meant he would fall, sail on the winds with the dust and faded candy wrappers, and eventually he would sweep back into the city and its cruel child's game of the all-seeing eyes, their rewards and punishments. All humans were flies caught in amber now. No one had wings, and the thick substance moved slowly and not too far, making life more about its limitations than its possibilities.

Limitations, Gary supposed he was attempting to escape them by coming out here on the roof. He needed a place where he could think. The all-seeing eyes and the thorny issues they created were part of the order of business on this dull Wednesday. A better perspective would help, as he had a meeting scheduled with the city security chief, Dan Stone, in about an hour.

“From a corporate standpoint, human beings are flesh, and flesh, like all other commodities, must be managed and controlled.” His old high school principal, John Long, had said that to justify the electric fever treatments given to students guilty of vandalism. Gary considered it, trying to conclude whether it was a rational proposition or just another mask for dehumanization. Then he heard a very faint whir on the wind and spun around. His eyes rose to a small rotunda above the door, and he automatically hit the image warp button on his wristband.

Now they had class-two observation beetles here on the rooftop. Studying the tiny eye, he thought of simply grabbing it and crushing it. Every day brought less freedom and privacy. No one cared, and no one knew exactly what privacy meant anymore. His old professor, Doctor Giorno had said, “Ah, but privacy is just a variable we can define in various societies to recreate them as peaceful and orderly.” And it was Giorno's definitions that ruled in the years of Renewal.

Blue electric sparks crawled on a transparent lockdown bubble below. He could see a public train gliding on a crowded platform. The scene looked serene, but he knew society hadn't been all that peaceful and orderly in the last few years. Freedom had been defined pretty much out of existence; it would be nearly impossible to bring it back. And despite all the security, the promised utopia had not arrived. Their promises of a new planet of justice had taken shape as a prison called Renewal, an industrial paradise with profits in the zillions for security manufacturers.

Doctor Giorno had also said that people obey the carrot-and-stick, especially when the stick is a truncheon and various forms of brief, frightening, and painful incarceration. Gary identified cameras, eye and iris scans, and print DNA detectors with the truncheon and the new long blackjack. You were safer off camera than on it. Places like the Skyway paid half a fortune to hold a New Year's party on a surveillance-free street, just to avoid the show-business killers.

“Privacy wasn't redefined; they stole it and packaged it as a commodity,” he thought, and then he bit his thick upper lip as he went back through the door to the elevator. A bitter taste remained on his tongue - Dan Stone had said he had some new answers to current problems. He hadn't been clear on what the answers might be. Stone always talked like an introductory sales brochure - all gloss and no substance.

Dan Stone's City Guard Corporation had outlets and stations throughout the city. Some were forty stories high, others were underground. Gary was scheduled to meet him at the Harrisch Surveillance Test Site, a place dedicated to the ancient founder of citywide fingerprinting and really known to only a few people. There wasn't an easy way to reach it - perhaps Stone knew one. For Gary, it meant a stroll through the business mall, down the high-rise canyon to an obscure doorway in a robot power building on the waterfront.

Tarnished ivy and hundreds of chirping birds clutched a massive brown stone Bank of the Earth structure; businesspeople with hair like molded plastic hurried down the shining marble mall walkways. Sunbeams left a gold sheen on the western windows, and, noticeable only to Gary, there was an odd crystalline flash from the rapid-fire street cameras. He knew that in the business district, they were high-level eye-scan beetles that identified people by the shape of their eyes and brows. They also picked up the fabric in the blue suits most professionals wore. Since he wore casual clothes made of a certain fabric, they wouldn't see his form, but they could read his brows.

A token City Guard cop rounded the corner; he wore a perfectly smooth blue uniform and a big square jaw like Stone's. He could’ve been drawn by a video game, and it made Gary wonder what Dan Stone could be up to—usually, his demonstrations were of new security equipment, and as the chief city inspector and technical expert in security matters, Gary would be stuck explaining it all to the mayor.

Maple leaves rustled in the man-made breeze. He twitched his freckled nose, and his lips curled sourly as he thought about the mayor. Good old Mayor John Henson, the travel-industry salesman-turned-politician and a big fan of high-tech security toys. Henson had sold thousands of surveillance-free vacation hours, so at least he had some grasp of the equipment. Gary always opposed buying the new stuff, but the eager-to-please mayor always bought it anyway. And that would likely be the case today. On some issues, Gary did have the power to block City Guard and Stone, but not presently, because he had his upcoming marriage to consider. His bride-to-be, Linda, didn't have access to his social circle. He had to be careful. If he screwed things up and got nailed for security violations, he could lose her in a legal tangle.

Deciding it might be better to warn Linda about the new situation, he turned down Baker Street, stopped beside a music store, and thought out the quickest route to her. The city had grown into a huge fractal starfish of more than 3,000 residential lockdown domes connected by public-access streets. Gary avoided the domes and usually traveled in paths that kept him with the general public. His dislike of the domes had to do with access; he'd read long ago that they used to deny people access to society because of the color of their skin. In a way, it was funny how that form of denial had been replaced by the security screenings. If you were a member of the general public, you didn't get into the domes.

Gary hated the idea of access and higher citizenship. He disliked many things that no one else considered. His ideas on security were much different, and he couldn't present them because they were too radical. Momentarily angered, he spat at a sewer grate, drawing startled glances from a clutch of neatly dressed women standing in the light of a news ticker box.

The Gold Corridor ended at the new waterfront neighborhoods, an area now listed as general public access but also residential, with huge condo towers. Meaning blocks mostly high in the sky. People swarmed up from the subway, streaming into enormous blue security bubbles. Gary followed a line through, emerged onto a public street, and was immediately jostled by a man with an eye patch and sour breath. As he stumbled sideways a step, a wrinkled hag in a wheelchair bumped him and began to curse. Regaining his balance, he grinned and pushed ahead, happy to be among the people and away from the sterile crowds of the restricted domes.

Linda would be somewhere on this block, but he could see nothing in the bright sun, so he crossed to the shaded side of the public mall. Greenery and shadows dripped. He walked slowly, sometimes shielding his eyes as he looked for her red snack cart. When he found it, he fought his way through the patchwork crowd.

Linda looked busy but cute despite the frustration; she had a few orders sizzling and a line of customers. Brushing her blond locks back, she said, “Number seven is up,” and smiled generously as she served a black lady dressed in the mismatched fashions of an American tourist.

Her eyes found his as she turned the next order, and she winked as he gave her a glance that said cut loose for a moment. A jet roared high above, and his gaze was drawn up the fifty-story canyon. He missed the plane and saw only mist trails, blue sky, an observation blimp, and faint, jewel-like scintillation on the UV-filter bubble. He studied the blimp for a moment, thinking about his relationship with Linda. Her nature could only be described as carefree and reckless; she'd intentionally wandered into prohibited areas during a station failure on the waterfront and approached him while he inspected damaged equipment sent in from the Scarsdale Dome. She’d had the nerve to ask him to cover for her - which he did, taking her by the hand and with him during the inspection. Then she sat near him as he worked, giggling and often mocking the sheep-like crowd. And they were sheep, unable to do anything but stand around and gape. They needed someone to push their buttons. Linda didn't need that - she made him forget every woman he'd ever known - she giggled and teased, and he wanted her.

When he lowered his gaze, Linda had her closed sign on the cart. She waved the crowd away, and a moment later, held a spicy, steaming lunch takeout under his nose. He took it, set it down, then leaned over and kissed her.

Linda's smile was elfin - romantic. Her hazel eyes glittered. “Your place tonight?” she said.

More than anything, he wanted to say yes, but that wasn't possible. “No, I'm involved in a new security deal with Dan Stone. We can't take chances right now.” Kissing her again, he took her slightly off her feet, and as he released her, a few people applauded.

“Why don't you do it here for the dick heads?” an old lady cackled as she pointed over her shoulder to silver security ridges in the far wall. “That's what they really want to see.”

Gary laughed and elbowed Linda. She got the message and quickly closed her cash. Then they strolled down the street to a public fountain. Golden water tumbled behind them; a carousel turned in front of a specialty arcade directly across the street.

“You're seeing someone else,” she said.

“Don't be silly. You know I wouldn't. It's because of Stone. They might be running some kind of special check on people involved in this new security thing. It's better to play it safe now, and then once we're married, you'll have full citizen access to the domes, and there'll be no more worries.”

“I thought you could get around all the checks? I mean, they can't really watch everyone, can they?”

“They can. The surveillance cameras use biometrics, specifically eye scans, to identify you. If they want to run a police check super-fast, processors burn a City Guard videodisc, piecing together all observations of you through various devices. They even have other tricks like checking for dates with missing segments to tell if you've been cheating surveillance.”

“Stone. That guy gives me the creeps. He looks like a pasty vampire with a machine for a master. His new security plan is probably to apply the access laws to restrict marriages.”

“He would favor that idea, but the politicians would never buy it. The Security Conglomerate only gets 90 percent of what it wants. The elite like to believe Toronto is a democracy, so the government and judiciary always grant citizens some basic rights. Full rights are now unattainable, of course, though you can buy more rights. Like all other things that were formerly in the public domain, they're now commodities that can be purchased. The corporations have really built themselves in as the highest level of government, though they never tell you that. So what I'm really saying is Stone and his corporate masters are more powerful than the mayor or the law, but they're not all-powerful. And they can’t see everything or watch all of the people all of the time.”

“The part that bothers me most is that they don't even seem human anymore. I mean Stone and politicians. Their only relationship with people is through security and technology. Even in the news, all they talk about is big projects, business, and technical developments. No human element at all.”

“You're very observant. I thought I was one of the few people noticing that. I thought it over, too. I think that when you can't point to real human achievement in society, then you have to point to objects and external things. It means they're hollow inside. The spirit is lacking, if not dead. It is not all for one and one for all anymore. And it's not humans for humans anymore, but only frightened corporations protecting themselves.”

“Maybe that's why we have the crazies now, like the show business killers. People are hollow, and they go mad.”

“It's a thought. It could also be what Stone is working on. His new security measures might be aimed at catching the show-business killers. There's a new conspiracy theory making the rounds. Some people think City Guard sends them out to kill people, and that bugs Stone so much he might actually do something to stop the killings.”

“He should. I mean, I think maybe they send the killers, too. They're an outfit that always wants to catch and jail people for the smallest things. But murder is something they do nothing about.”

“Ah, but the hitch there is one where the people aren't informed. They profit by taking public tax money to imprison people for small infractions and using them as slave labor. Murder investigations aren't profitable, and that's why they do nothing.”

“I see. I mean, I see that it stinks.”

“It really does.”

Gary kissed Linda goodbye at the expressway memorial and barrier. Her rosy cheeks seemed to fade, and he hoped for better days. He ended their rendezvous with talk of the wedding and the arrangements, which cheered her up. Her eyes brightened as she kept her arms loose around his neck and chattered about all the things to be done. All too soon, they parted, and he went through the narrow gate to a city government area.

City trucks and cars whizzed quietly by on the back street. Crossing, he walked directly under the supports and huge arched span of the expressway. Tall weeds, discarded bottles, and trash gave company to a few roaming derelicts that littered the next quarter kilometer. At Lakeshore Road, he turned left. Haze clouded the waterfront skyline; it resembled a child's cluttered sketch. He headed for it, watching the lines sharpen until the power station came into view. Iris scanners let him through three layers of high electric fencing, then he used the coder in his wristband to pass through a metal door in the concrete generator block. From there, the elevator took him down to the test station.

Dan Stone waited at the bottom like a piranha waits at the bottom of a dark pool. His close-focused brows, sharp eyes, and the red-tinted lights highlighted that aspect. Stone was a man possessed by aspirations that molded his gaunt frame into a near apparition. He looked driven, but in the way a drug addict looks driven to serve a power that is devouring him.

They shook hands. Stone grinned, the same funny grin he always had. Something was wrong with it, like maybe his gums were swollen. Mostly, it was due to his overly large jaw.

“Don't see any guards or personnel. What's up?”

“Just you and me for this presentation. This block has been secured. Today's matter is of a high-security nature.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“A lot of interesting stuff. But a headache, too. Follow me.”

Plated halls gleamed; the floors were slick with the colors of the spotlights. Stone paced ahead confidently, doors whooshing open as he walked. It was like moving through a spaceship. In about three minutes, they arrived at an office and room he'd set up for his demonstrations.

Stone poured a couple of chocolate coffees, and they sat in leather chairs in front of a bank of security and display equipment. “I have a new security proposal for the Mayor,” he said.

Gary took the thick City Guard folder and gave Stone a practiced look. A look he knew Stone would see as both skeptical and considerate. “In a simple sentence. What is it about?”

“Knew you would say that. Simply put, we want to add new security features to block the show-business killers, and we feel we have a political answer to that problem. It is one that the mayor can present to the public.”

“Are you saying you know their motive, know why they kill?”

“Yes. I think so. Here is a backgrounder on one of the killers,” he said, pulling out a City Guard videodisc. “Let's take a look at it.”

Gary sat back as the display lit up, then some basic facts on the criminal, as written by Stone, scrolled by on the marquee. Stone introduced a segment. Initially, Gary found it irritating to be sitting beside Stone and, at the same time, have to watch him outline a few facts on the screen. As it turned out, one of the latest showbiz killers had been a community activist and perennial candidate for political office. Stone wanted to play up this fact, but it didn't seem to add up when Gary factored in that the killers came from all sorts of random backgrounds.

It was the sort of boring security backgrounder that made Gary wish he could put a gun to his own head and end it all. Yet from the corner of his eye, he could see Stone watching it with great interest. Up until his psychotic episode, the subject's entire life had been a dull home movie. Even the secretly filmed meetings of his freedom cell were dull. A wimp, he was pushed in everything by his wife. It didn't look like he could even conceive of violence or crime, so from that perspective, it wasn't unusual that he was an activist who thought surveillance unnecessary. In one segment, Stone appeared on screen to point out that the subject advanced an illegal theory called the Broken Doors Theory of Privacy. Seeing this as an out, Gary signaled Stone to cut the surveillance disc.

The screen blanked out. “This theory, the guy pushed. What is it? Why do you consider it so dangerous?”

“Good question. It is a key point here. A crazy professor named Jack Watson came up with the theory fifty years ago. A paroled convict shot him a few years later. Others promoted the theory. Under this theory, the city is viewed as the serene home of citizen privacy. The moment a camera, device, or police system invades a citizen's privacy and personal dignity, or restricts his free movement in his own home or neighborhood, a door has been broken. Privacy has been lost, and the poison gas of the totalitarian ovens is seeping in. The wolf is breaking into the house. If any broken doors or illicit surveillance are tolerated, the house of the public will be destroyed.”

“I see. So as Toronto's top rep of City Guard, you're ensuring that the trillion-dollar world surveillance industry doesn't suffer losses because of privacy theories and activists.”

“It might look that way. But remember that, as the Toronto head of City Guard, I am also the chief of police and an honorary deputy mayor. I'm a law-abiding American and proud to be a Canadian citizen, too. When I see people promoting the idea of a surveillance-free world, I know they're people who want to break the law and get away with it. These people name themselves as criminals. They're not only mentally corrupt, but they're also insane. This particular man infected his mind with the Broken Door Theory, and it led to total insanity and murder. My submission to the mayor is that these sorts of ideas are the motive behind all of these killers. That's why no amount of surveillance has been able to give us common factors or early signs. The signs are thoughts that can't be seen.”

Gary frowned. “I don't think Mayor Henson will buy that. If the killings are caused by factors we can't trace, we can't stop them. And the mayor is also a spokesman for the travel industry. People have to at least think it's better to have some time free of surveillance, or they won't purchase expensive vacations. You have to give Henson some solid meat to bite on.”

“Unfortunately, we can't stop them altogether, and we can't forbid people from thinking certain thoughts. City Guard is working on new technology to bring this situation under control. We can control the killers and eliminate the activists. And also warn people about what thoughts are dangerous.”

“Do you have more details on this new program?”

“Yes, and we will forward all details to you and the mayor as soon as he expresses interest. Right now, I want to show the second part of the backgrounder on this dangerous activist. The actual killing spree.”

Stone grimaced like a pussy-whipped desk sergeant readying himself for combat. He adjusted the screen color depth and curvature as if it were a feature production about to play. No credits appeared, just a brilliant fade-in of a sunny morning and the subject - Jack Cresso - walking down a spiral staircase in his teddy-bear-patterned bathrobe. His wife, a shapely and mercenary sort of brunette, was at the front porch lockup, about to leave for work. Jack kissed her dearly and whispered some inaudible promises in her ear. Then she was gone with happy heels clicking, and he immediately threw off his robe and undergarments and walked to the sunny kitchen. A steaming cereal breakfast awaited him; he grabbed the plate and dumped it in the trash eater, poured his coffee into a large clean ashtray, then pulled out a drawer of kitchen utensils and carried it upstairs to the bedroom.

Jack marched down the hall to a storage closet, his bare feet hitting the floor tiles so forcefully his penis bounced up and down. Sports items and clothing flew through the air as he emptied the closet. When nearly everything was out, he whistled a silly kids' show tune as he rummaged through the stuff. He chose a stack of gear, hunting knives, and a gun, then went back to the bedroom. He heaped it all onto the waterbed with the kitchen utensils, then went to the bathroom and wheeled his toiletry stand and a full-length mirror down to the foot of the bed.

Sitting cross-legged on the bed, he adjusted the mirror so he could watch himself. Picking up the gun, he studied the chamber, his eyes rolling slightly like demented thoughts were racing in his mind. Gary could see the weapon clearly in close-up. One of the old ribbon lasers with the embossed star pattern on the wide barrel. They were illegal now and considered inhumane, as the inefficient charge caused the victim extreme burn pain. He figured Jack Cresso must have forgotten to turn his in years ago.

Finished ogling the gun, Jack took a large needle, positioned it, and then drove it through the base of his erect penis. Some blood oozed; he'd missed the large vein, and his erection remained as he slowly drew it out. No pain showed on his face as he forced a large gold ring into place in the wound, but his erection did weaken and drop as he finished the operation.

Looking in the mirror, Jack smiled joyously, his full lips, wide oval face, and eyes taking on a moonstruck look. Next order of business was to shave his eyebrows with a straight razor and replace them with stripes of grease paint. He also made incisions beneath his eyes and stopped the bleeding by rubbing in more dark blue grease. His ears were of no use to him; he simply cut them out and burned the bleeding to scar tissue with a low-range pulse from the laser.

Burn pain didn't faze him. Blood was oozing on his penis, so to fix the problem, he applied heavy grease. Then he began to dress, putting on a military camouflage T-shirt, pants, flak jacket, kneepads, combat boots, wrist guards, and a heavy belt with clips to hold weapons and other articles. He chose the gun, a hunting knife, the needle, and some empty cans to put in the belt.

Then he studied his hideous image in the mirror, grinned, and popped off the bed. After boldly walking to the front door, he decided not to exit that way and went to the kitchen, opened the storage elevator. Robot cleaning equipment stood in his way. He removed it and managed to get inside while squatting. Reaching out for the button, he sent the elevator down to the sub-basement.

There wasn't any camera feed on the elevator ride. The next clip showed him popping out in the dim basement behind a human maintenance worker, and as the guy spun around to look, he grabbed him forcefully and strangled him on the spot. Jack exhibited great strength, holding the guy off the floor while he struggled. Due to the man's strong neck, this murder lasted a full, horrendous minute.

The body dropped and lay crumpled on the floor. A look of sudden desperation appeared on Jack's face, though no one else was around. He jumped and ran for the door as if he were being pursued.

It was an empty hall. Jack raced past service rooms and burst through large swing doors, entering a huge concrete bay of garbage bins. An exiting truck rattled, heading slowly up the concrete ramp to an open arch and the outside world. Jack took off after it, pounding across the cement like a mad soldier tailing an enemy tank.

He caught it as it turned the corner, jumped onto the passenger-side running board, opened the door, and went inside. The truck swerved as the driver saw the mad passenger and let go of the wheel. Jack burned his face off with the laser before he even got a chance to scream.

The truck rolled on, crushing news kiosks and conferencing booths. The body flew out the door and landed face up on the empty steps of a theatre. Skull bits protruded from flesh that still smoked, sizzled, and bubbled with blood.

Jack took control of the vehicle and sped up, heading for the busier morning rush-hour streets. With the grease on his face, he looked like a crazed garbage man. He ripped around the corner at New Kensington and mounted the busy sidewalk. Screams and cries of warning and agony echoed as the renegade truck barreled on, flattening a few people too slow to jump aside.

Mangled bodies thumped and tumbled as Jack traveled a block. He turned back onto the road and managed to crush and back over two City Guard cops as they tried to board the vehicle. He looked nearly invincible, but then he sped up again, lost control, and hit a huge piece of metal street art head-on. The truck fenders clanged as they bent. Jack got mashed against the wheel. The front tires remained spinning; the truck had climbed the side of the huge phallic work of art, creating a new, crumpled work.

A crowd began to gather, then the truck door flew open, and Jack fell to the sidewalk. People began to flee as he got to his knees. A moment later, he was up and running, heading for the lockdown gates and the lower-security public squares.

Several people got in his way and were stabbed and dumped aside. He threw an angry man through a plate-glass window, blood trails shooting from a dagger planted in his throat. Then the final phase began in the public square.

Gary knew what was coming and covered his eyes for much of this part. All showbiz killers headed for the general public because of the increased exposure. Surveillance video tickers from these areas were eligible for publication in mass media.

Taking his eyes off the screen, Gary glanced at Stone and noted that he was nearly hypnotized. On camera, Jack Cresso was on a killing spree with the laser. Falling to one knee, he strafed the hot beam up, getting a crowd of unsuspecting businessmen emerging from a bank restaurant. Red liquid flew as a stomach ballooned and burst. Ribbons of flame cut flesh. He saw a man's head fall off and roll as he reached up instinctively for his burned neck. A really big guy was on his knees, his jaw and mouth gone, a horrible mass of tissue oozing.

Torn flesh smoked and exploded into spores; the massacre continued until Gary finally turned to Stone and said. “Look, Dan. I know it doesn't end until he makes a few more bows to the cameras and City Guard somehow manages to kill him.”

Stone cleared his throat indignantly and hit the panel, blurring the screen. “I have a reason for wanting you to see it all. People have to understand what they are dealing with in order to decide on the measures needed to punish these criminals.” Sliding out the shutters, he turned in his chair, a look of calculated disgust on his face. “The poor, sick bastards. Wouldn't it be nice if we could execute them before they kill?”

Gary wiped his brow and shivered in the heat. “Yes.”

Stone grinned. “That is exactly what City Guard proposes to do. We plan to have some public areas equipped with automatic extermination equipment. As soon as the mayor gives the okay and we receive a report of a show-business episode, we can set the tracking program for execution. A second thing to make the killers less glamorous will be to allow the media to show the act of execution and not the entire killing spree. It can be sold to the people through a public relations campaign that will include commercials and pamphlets warning of the dangers of improper thoughts.”

A magnetic train blurred red as it raced through the transit station behind him. Gary stood in the rushing breeze at the edge of Madison Square, his thick blond hair snapping like a flag as he faced the beautiful day. Vapor clouds from the auto-express rings had condensed to gold ribbing and feather trails high in the flinty blue sky. Ships of cumulus cloud hung in the haze beyond the jumble of skyscrapers to the south. The warm air carried the fragrances of nature and of commerce, mixing them well in his nostrils. Fast food and popcorn, drifting odors from vendors displaying their suppertime goods, and a blend of perfumes from the garden and greenery dripping above the strolling crowd were in the air.

People milled impatiently on the mall strip, most of them making last-minute purchases for evening food and entertainment. Some of them were familiar faces. Al Thorton, his old buddy from the Southern Station, stood by a bar on a Tall-Cheers patio. He took a step toward him, then stopped and popped an All-Aid to cool his growling stomach. The heavy report felt like a lead weight in his bag, but electronic versions weren’t allowed. He needed to do some private thinking and to digest it a little longer. Cutting left down the steps, he walked along the lip of a police monument and hopped off at a circle of public benches created from stacked slabs of marble. Most seats were empty; a few people ate pizza as they watched sports promos flash on a CityWide TV media billboard mounted on a huge, vine-laden wall fragment. The seats nearest him were vacant. He seemed to be in the clear, so he pulled out the report and began to leaf through the pages.

Wind swept his face and ruffled the manila sheets. A deep frown creased his brow as he noticed that Stone had signed a work order on the test equipment a month ago. The new stuff was now installed and functional in a few unspecified locations. If a killer were to go on a rampage in one of those test areas, the guard weapons could actually execute him and possibly kill members of the public in the process.

He bit his lip and stared at disposable candy wrappers slowly vaporizing at his feet. The flash of a uniform grabbed his attention. He looked up to see a City Guard officer approaching the benches. Closing the report, he put it away, then he watched as the guard questioned some people. A wrinkled black man took a poster of a transient vandal from the cop, stared at it, then passed it to the others. Gary grinned uncomfortably as he waited for the guard to move in his direction. If the guard took him for a suspect of some sort, he'd be strip-searched on the spot, with his pens and markers taken from his bag as evidence of vandalism. Pulling rank wasn't desirable, but it would have to be done. Stone would go through the roof if an underling seized his report.

The guard had the perfectly chiseled face and musculature of a manikin; he flashed the poster, then pursed his lips as Gary shook his head no. He didn't appear to be suspicious, but he did sit at a nearby bench and watch the passing crowd. Gary did the same, from time to time checking the guard out of the corner of his eye, relieved to see that he seemed preoccupied with adjusting his sidearm and watching leggy women.

Metallic credit cards flashed at the kiosks, mingling with the glitter of fingerprint pads and iris-camera puffs. The light sharpened to guillotines in his mind. In deeper thoughts, he pictured the whole world as a security knife-edge that could cut anyone down - should they make a misstep.

Gary's thoughts continued to drift randomly; the fragrance of lilac blooms from the wall behind him swept him back to his past in the small city of North Falls, Ontario. In his youth, he'd witnessed an open-air execution. Not the sort of thing done by automatic equipment that Stone favored. They didn't do anything like that in the early days when the City Guard Corporation had first taken over as private police worldwide. That day, he'd been skipping school to swim at the canal and ended up watching from the sumacs as guards drowned an old man.

The killing and the beating had been ugly. He saw the guards smash the man's face with clubs, but as a deterrent to delinquency, it didn't work. He kept skipping school, got into drugs and vandalism. Authorities said he was destined to become a young habitual and slave to the international prison system, and the prophecy began to play itself out. Then, a forced intelligence test at the new Toronto boot camp revealed that he had a genius-level IQ, and his life changed. Officials pulled him from reform school and sent him to the best private schools. Political science and security studies were his majors. He worked and watched with dismay as the gods of the profession swallowed his friends. Jamey, Tom, and Hamid - compassion and the freethinking nature of youth were replaced by careerism and materialism. In the end, he couldn't stand to look at them; they were like mighty trees gone hollow at the core. He knew that a society that emptied human beings could only be a society gone wrong, yet he couldn't see any way of changing it. A complex world is a collective effort. Change begins as inspiration and spreads through the minds of many people. And change is impossible when inspiration is prohibited. It left him stuck playing a game and not living his life to the fullest. Too many people had become chess pieces on a world board; they had not advanced as human beings. In Renewal World, the brightest were taken away from the horrors of life at the bottom and away from the real world.

Shouting and a woman's hysterical screams ended his musing. He turned, wondering what was happening. His view was momentarily blocked as the City Guard jumped to his feet and ran to the scene. The commotion was a short way off at a row of book, food, and music kiosks. Two men had fallen on a strip of grass, and another man was staggering, holding his throat.

A brilliant flash of silver light passed high in the sky, and more silver lit in Gary's mind as he realized a few things at once. Dan Stone's report named odorless gas as one of the new quick methods for exterminating showbiz killers. If people were being gassed now, it meant Stone's test equipment had malfunctioned. The malfunction was triggering the rest of the surveillance lockdown system for this square. The silver flash meant satellite and surveillance discs were now calculating a grid pattern for Madison Square. In a few seconds, the energy walls would be up. The place would be divided into firfty large energy cells that would block the passage of humans and objects but not the atmosphere. Meaning the gas would likely drift and kill everyone.

Chief Stone's new system had really gone wacko. The gas was supposed to jet quickly on a showbiz killer as he passed, and there wasn't a killer on the loose. Energy walls and the lockdown system were intended for extreme emergencies and were almost never used due to their high power drain. Stone's new equipment was definitely not supposed to trigger them.

Gary knew he couldn't possibly save the people in the square. He had to escape, reach one of the city's monitoring stations, and work on disabling Stone's modifications. Leaping up the benches, he made it to the wall fragment holding the media screen and stepped up its jagged side. From there, he jumped for the main surrounding wall and managed to grab a handful of vines. He scrambled for footing, caught a crack, and then climbed to the top, finding the platform to be about four feet wide. He tried a dive to the other side and another public area, but he didn't make it. The rising force shield slammed him, knocking him back. Tumbling to the edge, he seized a tree branch and vines.

The gas moved in a wave of distortion below; people doubled over and moaned, blood bubbles rising to their lips as they went down. Running toward the transit station, he came to a gap in the force wall. The open space allowed him to climb onto the station roof. Fortunately, the bubble wasn't nearly as smooth as it looked. His feet found purchase on the grainy surface; he got over the top, scaled partway down, and then dropped. Earth and wood chips flew as he landed in a soft flowerbed. Turning, he looked around and saw an area under specialized lockdown. The grounds before him were an elaborate sort of park - chip trails, fountains, trimmed grass and bushes, spaced willows and maples. A large edifice rose beyond the maples. Wind-rocked boughs tossed sunbeams and shadows on recessed windows. Glassed-off areas glittered like gems. It had to be some sort of government complex.

He dusted his trousers and then began jogging across the grounds, hoping to get assistance quickly. A green security post stood at the back, and Gary was delighted to find it manned by two guards. They saw him coming and emerged from the side door, a big, swarthy chap with muscles bursting from his shirt, stepping into the lead.

Gary halted, looking into the guard's dark-ringed eyes. “There's been a disaster,” he said, trying to catch his breath. “In Madison Square. I have to contact some people at the city monitoring department.”

The big guy grinned evilly and swung in to seize him. The second guard grabbed his other arm. Neither of the guards said a word; they just grunted as they forced him along. Stumbling forward at the post, Gary caught a glimpse of a bronze plaque. Madison Institute was embossed on it. He was on his way to an asylum.

Fever and dizziness swept him; he collapsed to his knees. The guards forced him up as the gates began to open outward. He waited until there was just enough space for one person to squeeze through, and then he lunged, pulling the guards with him. They hit the iron rails hard, and the big guard crumpled from a bang to the head. The smaller guard went to his knees and groaned. Gary turned and punched him in the nose with his free left hand. Blood spurted; he kicked him over, then went down and pulled his ID card. Ducking back into the security post, he used the card to unlock the weapons case. Three guns were inside; ignoring the sidearms, he pulled out the ribbon laser. A check showed it to be the latest model, extremely powerful, and not available on the commercial market.

Gun in hand, Gary turned and fled south, headed for the wall. Shadows and wind rushed; he reached the stone post and used bushes and a circuit pipe to get over the top. Looking down, he saw a security bubble and a walkway to one of the lockdown domes. A young couple strolled to the barrier. As soon as they were gone, he dropped down. Squinting against the sunlight and Plexiglas reflections, he thought over options and prepared to move. The better idea would be to simply go it alone, get into the dome and gain fast city access - an emergency system he could use to get across town to the monitoring station.

Ferns shifted in the breeze, an image of thousands of cameras zooming in on him flashed in his mind, then his nerves settled as he walked through the arch into a peaceful public area. A huge daycare playground was to his right, and a flashy commercial strip and arcade were directly ahead on a higher level. Fast city transit was always near government offices and City Guard stations. And that would mean taking one of the elevators to the top on his left.

Hurrying as much as he could without looking desperate, he passed lockers and washrooms in the side concourse toward the gleaming bank of elevators just beyond a financial services waiting area. He stepped left to avoid the crowd and was nearly at the elevators when pandemonium broke out on the level above.

Several people were hollering, and he could hear toy-like bursts from a cheap automatic weapon. A crush developed, then a wounded man fell over the railing and onto people walking below. A second blood-soaked man tumbled down the escalator. Gary had to look twice to believe the situation. A show-business killer was on a rampage in the arcade area. More bullets and blood showered through some palms, and then a big man appeared by a fern, his automatic weapon strafing a crowd fleeing through the aisles.

Bodies flew over exploding arcade machines. Blue smoke rose from fried plastics, then the killer rushed out, leaped over an aluminum railing, and landed on the escalator. He fired deadly bursts into the crowd as he came down slowly. This crazed killer also fired with his other hand, and bullets licked past Gary, ripping up a post and causing him to duck behind a marble pillar.

He peeked out, seeing the showbiz killer run back up the escalator and along the railing. A big jump, and the madman landed on the roof of a descending open-air elevator. From there, he strafed the crowd as the elevator went to ground … then he hopped down, turned, and fired as the doors slid open.

Flesh boiled as a spray of hot expanding metal filaments hammered the enclosed area. It was a massacre, and it was the elevator Gary would've taken. He shuddered and gripped his stolen ribbon laser as the showbiz killer turned and headed in his direction. A glimpse of the killer's grease-painted face spooked him. He ducked back behind the pillar, his fingers trembling as his prints unlocked the higher settings, allowing him to switch the laser gun to maximum impact.

His breath seemed to freeze as he waited, like he'd suddenly become a creature with cold blood. Two fleeing businessmen passed, stumbled, and fell, and were ripped apart like rag dolls in a hail of gunfire. The cruel gun rattle seemed nearly next to his ear, and he couldn't wait any longer, so he simply stepped out, spotted the rushing target, and fired.

The laser flash lit the air with a yellow aura as a brilliant ribbon of red light twisted from the wide barrel. It popped Gary's ears and burned the air between him and the killer instantly, sending the corkscrew of energy straight into the murderer’s chest. The impact could have knocked down a wall. It turned his ribs into a spiral of flaming flesh and blood steam and pounded him straight to the hard floor. He slid, smearing the tiles, and came to rest by the elevator.

The showbiz killer was burned and cooked to candied meat - as dead as he could possibly be. And the area kept emptying as the people had seen Gary's laser and were now running from him.

He stepped up to the killer's body and looked down. The face had melted. Something wasn't right. Crouching, he touched the man's hair with the barrel of his gun. It smoked and fell aside. Tapping the forehead with the butt of his gun, he eased it back.

The whole thing peeled off and shrank. A facial mask; the guy hadn't been a genuine show-business killer at all. The face was still too burned to be recognizable. He went to the man's pockets, found his wallet, and took it out. The ID bank named him as Hazellel J. Bonner, a City Guard cop.

Paling and gulping, Gary rose and backed away. Then he ducked back behind the pillar and tried to think. The lockdown, gas, and the phony killer hadn't been an accident. Dan Stone had targeted him. A sinking feeling of dizziness fell from his head to his solar plexus. This action could only be a takeover bid by the City Guard Corporation. Once he was out of the way, the mayor would be caught off guard. Toronto would be the twentieth city completely gobbled up by City Guard.

After he died, Stone would name him as the cause of the chaos. The people would object to government by City Guard, and so would the federal government. That is, they would object, but no one would really fight back effectively against the City Guard's roster of law firms, and the takeover would succeed. National governments were too addicted to the rising financial markets that kicked in after private sector police took over city governments. Unless he personally stopped the whole deal, it would go through at the local, national, and global levels.

City Fast Transit was now out of the question, as was every other place Dan Stone might have tapped. He turned and ran for the parking lot, an idea flashing in his mind. Gary never drove, as he didn't believe in billing the taxpayer for expensive vehicles. That meant Dan Stone would not expect him to drive anywhere.

An eye camera picked him up, and the door opened as he ran. Electric cars filled the dusty front bay. He needed a faster hydrogen model, so he took the elevator to one of the higher levels.

Popping out on the fourth, he looked around at the cars. Damn, new hydrogen cars looked more like saucers with wings. A blue Chevy racer with stars embedded in the fiber body caught his eye. Using the laser on a low setting, he fried the lock magnet and got inside. Odors of the new plush interior filled his nostrils as the engine auto-started. As he pulled out, he ground his teeth, expecting an alarm, then he realized that he was probably the first person to steal a car in more than twenty years.

The launch computer was set for the downtown freeway ring. He didn't change it; he just sat back, the sensation almost like G-force as he shot up the ramp through sun dazzles and low vapor drifts.

Automatic tolls in the ring meant no delay; he set the dial for cruise 200 as he slipped into the stream of traffic. His car raced down the sun tunnel, and after about a five-minute blast, he glanced below. It was too much of a blur. A check of the dash map showed him nearly directly above the coordinates marking the monitoring station.

Satisfied, he sat back, and then the vehicle began to slow down. Gary punched the forward imager to see what could be happening. It panned a toll area looming ahead, revealing a couple of City Guard cars, some uniformed officers, and robot-deputies stopping vehicles.

Braking hard, he guided the racer to the curb. He jumped to the artificial turf and crossed the shallow gully to the transparent barrier.

Gripping the laser with both hands, he let it hum at a midrange setting. The slowly widening beam created bubbling and distortion on the barrier shield. Warp force increased until the shield's area popped out like a soap bubble. It broke, and the kickback prevented the rush of air from sucking him over. When it eased, he walked to the edge.

Swinging over, he caught a hybrid steel cable and moved slowly down in the wind. The cable was fixed to an unbreakable pylon, and from it, he went down a ladder to the pseudo-concrete-and-steel base. Chunks of false concrete, boulders, and earth were heaped on a huge mound below. He made his way down through thick weeds and dry mud. Yelling echoed above, but he could see nothing. A large, rusted sign at the intersection read "Playground of the Supercity," but the name of the development was unreadable. Blocks of smashed high-rise buildings stretched ahead. This part of the city had been destroyed after the lake-bottom explosion twenty years ago. The car map had it listed as vacant property beside the City Monitoring Station.

Broken ledges and cables swung dangerously from tilted buildings. Huge cracks split the walls and the roadway. Faint odors of a dead town reached down into his lungs like the tiniest of foul and ghostly fingers. The center of the street had collapsed into the sewer in places, and dark plastic liquid bubbled and oozed in puddles. Wind swept through the alleys and over the tarnished wrecks, kiosks, and bins. It creaked and spoke in its own tongue in the gusts shaking the ravaged buildings.

Despite the abandoned air, his approach was cautious. The sun above seemed fierce, and from an older time, ghosts and spots kept appearing in the corner of his eye and in windows. Wherever he looked, shadows webbed the melting glass of yesterday's city, like a dusting of death remaining on blurred gravestones.

He took his City Guard-enabled palm organizer from his bag, disabled the tracking feature, and pinpointed the monitoring station. Turning in the direction described, he found it blocked by a huge bank building. One that had held up quite well through past disasters - cracked with front steps torn by rising earth, but structurally sound at the foundation.

A narrow side street to the left was the only way around it. He walked toward it, then heard a faint growl and halted. His eyes darted to the bank's open front doors, but he saw nothing but bright sunlight and shadowy darkness. His next step drew a howl. A sleek mass broke free. Black, huge, and powerful - a drooling City Guard dog bounded over the broken steps.

Gary knew the creature had mutant genes, its job being to devour derelicts and criminals who strayed into this dead-end area. He could not win a struggle with it. Crouching, he set the laser for mass block and maximum heat, then he fired. The dog was ten feet away and leaping. Air distortion from the beam shimmered in a ring, then recoil knocked him back on his butt. He saw the dog fly up, turn furnace red, and explode in a wave of boiling liquid. Flesh and bone became charcoal in the air; a loud hiss from vaporizing fluids was followed by a mournful wail of the wind, and a falling piece of fireproof circuit board that had been the creature's brain.

Gary hurried down the side street, glancing up at the dangerous overhangs darkening the glare. At the back of the bank, he found heaps of rubble and the huge security wall that separated the vacant lot from the monitoring station.

Again, customizing the laser settings, he gave the barrier a shock blast and watched as toughened concrete crumbled. Dust cleared, revealing steel plating; above on the wall, blue sparks flew from energy rails.

Going over wasn't possible, so he set the laser to burn through … a risky proposition when Stone's City Guard goons were probably already there to block his arrival, and he didn't know where he would emerge in the station.

Blue heat streamed from the laser, and the metal began to redden as it softened. An unexpected reaction followed as the entire section of the plate spooned inward. It shattered with a thundering boom. A mass of concrete crashed behind him, and dust choked him as he dived through the red-hot opening. Hot metal seared his arm in one small patch near the elbow. Gary rolled from it and scrambled up, ducking sparks from a snaking cable.

Glancing ahead at a tunnel of cables and metal rings, he knew he had cut through into a service and repair duct. Great luck, as Stone's men wouldn't know how to navigate the system. A check of the burned cables showed they were relatively unimportant runners from a southern station. Damage to the system was minimal.

Moving quietly down the duct to an air vent, he peeked out into control room three. Two City Guards were at the computer banks; an alarm was flashing red, and they were panning the halls with detectors as they searched for the intruder.

Control room two had a service door, so he headed back up the tunnel. Surveillance wasn't a problem as there wasn't any in the service tunnel. In this case, the cameras acted as a good decoy, keeping them on the screens while he moved. He knew Dan Stone likely wouldn't be inside. There was a reason for it, as he couldn't access the higher security levels of the government system. Hacking into it wasn't possible; only the head city inspector could gain access, and Gary held that position … which is why Stone wanted him dead. Then Stone could break in or get access from the mayor.

Slats of light from a vent showed before the door. He peeked, finding the situation the same as in the control room, with two guards at the security screens. A quick calculation on how to achieve the task at hand buzzed in his head. It meant that the guards in the monitoring station had to go down, and eventually Dan Stone would have to die.

At the door, he took a long, slow breath, and then he swung it open, targeted the guards, and took them down with a wide stun pulse. A couple of screens warped in the blast. Racing to a terminal, he started the access procedure, sitting straight in the chair as his palm and eye scan read in. He typed in his access key as the DNA countdown began. On the screen, he could see guards racing down the tunnels toward him. His new calculation said that he might not make it. He typed in a command and waited to punch okay.

Heels rang outside in the hall; the DNA countdown zeroed in, allowing him to hammer in his code just as the door swung open.

A guard burst through, his weapon raised. “Freeze!” he yelled.

But Gary didn't freeze. Instead, he authorized the ready command - CLEAR STATION OF INTRUDERS.

And when the button was pressed, it did so instantly, blacking out the lights and sending out a sweeping beam aimed directly at the brains of all human beings not listed on the access roster.

Bodies thumped to the floor throughout the station. Fumes of burning flesh came to him as the lights came back on. He didn't bother to look around, but just kept working. Linda was his first order of business. Keying in her code, he found her at home. A second number rang her phone, and a moment later, her worried face appeared on the screen.

“You okay?” he said.

“Not really. I just got a call from City Guard asking if you were here. They say they're sending officers over to protect me.”

“No, they're not. I'm at the monitoring station handling a crisis. I don't want them in there, so I'm putting your place on lockdown. Just sit tight till I get back to you.”

Switching back to station surveillance, he picked up an incoming message. A read showed it to be directly from Stone, asking for a report on the intruder alarm.

Gary sent a dummy report back and waited for the rebound. It came four seconds later, a great piece of luck. Dan Stone had used his personal key to access the monitoring station, a stupid mistake because now Gary had it.

Going through the system for a report on alterations, he found the files on Stone's new extermination equipment. The scan of the program showed that Stone had tried to kill him by inserting his eye scan. A second check showed that Stone hadn't set the system to exterminate anyone else.

Typing in a code that set the system to time out in three hours as a public safety hazard, he accessed the program core and removed his own eye-scan info, replacing it with Dan Stone's personal key. As a follow-up, he erased the installation documents and inserted messages from Stone that said only "Satan, Stone, and Kill". A sweep program covered Gary’s tracks as he exited.

“Let Stone run from his guns for a while,” he thought.

Next order of business was to use Stone's key, bouncing it from a City Guard police computer as an urgent text message from Stone to the Mayor. “I've decided to end it all,” the message said. “The whole filthy crew is going to die with me. The show must go on, and that's show business, isn't it?”

“Hum, what about City Guard Headquarters in LA?” Gary thought, and a moment later, he used Stone's key to send off a dummy message informing them that the takeover bid in Toronto had succeeded.

Now he had some time to check a few other things, and he started by using the key to access City Guard files on the Broken Door Theory that so upset Stone. So many documents came up that he had to switch to text view. City Guard people had a real thing going for this theory. The best thing was to just look up the original banned report and see what it said.

Scanning to the bottom of the report, he came to Professor Jack Watson's conclusions on the new show-business serial killers, which raised his eyebrows and his hair.

“ ... Man is, after all, a creature that originally lived mostly in isolation and in small family and tribal groupings. A degree of privacy was allowed in all situations; therefore, we can only conclude that, for psychological health, society must provide a degree of privacy. Studies demonstrate that Show Business Killers are completely normal human beings. Their murderous behavior arises from the long-term deprivation of a basic human need: privacy. My final conclusion is that society itself must be restructured to suit human beings and human needs and that means dismantling nearly the entire security net we have constructed over the last seventy-five years…”

Gary frowned. The shock was still sinking in. Dan Stone and the City Guard Corporation wanted the public to believe the murderous behavior was rooted in thinking the wrong thoughts.

A sudden impulse curled his lips into a grin. He decided to have Dan Stone pay for his wrongdoing by informing the public of the truth.

He scratched his chin and then decided how to do it. Making a copy of the document, he attached Stone's key to it and sent it out for publication, following it with a sweep so it couldn't be traced back to the monitoring station. Because content rules allow City Guard space in all media, highlights of document would appear on screens worldwide in about three minutes. It would guarantee that Dan Stone would be remembered as the whistleblower of the century and also as a madman who exterminated members of the public and himself with dangerous new security equipment.

He smiled sweetly at the thought, but not for long, as he saw a blip moving on the tracker. It showed Stone in a central dome moving toward an area containing some of the extermination equipment, a laser setup that would kill him quickly.

Murder was something he detested. He could barely believe he'd done it, but it would be a long, rebellious worldwide goodbye and funeral for Stone and City Guard. Time would pass, and the mayor would buy his plan for a public police force. He was certain he'd left no tracks. Pleasant visions of Linda and the wedding rose in his mind; he hit her key and smiled as her rosy cheeks appeared on the screen.

-- the end –

Slug Hunt

By Gary Morton

The cruelty of his small world was captured, shivering on the sticky web of the dream. Holes in the endless tumbled buildings and eroded faces in the concrete revealed a mood of agony and loss. He heard something snarl, then the grind of teeth became the squeal of radials spinning through greenish wisps of smog.

He saw his wife again. Janice was dead, gray and splashed with a violet shading of wine, blood, and bruise. A derelict factory loomed over her like a squat giant. Up in the gloom, he saw the city itself, what it had become … a soulless monstrosity made of the smoke and thunder of tarnished commerce … a bone-grinder shaking mechanisms, devouring purposeless humanity.

A wall was blocking him; a wall had always blocked him. It was stone, brick, cement, and all the metal of derailed trains and freeway wrecks. Severed limbs crowned the rubbish heaps at its base. Tar and blood bubbled in the cracks. It made him think of every shallow thug he'd ever been up against, all of the nasty bosses who'd fired him, and every bastard who'd ever insulted and underrated him. It was nearly everyone. Their faces flashed, warped and ugly as fresh skin grafts. They were the stopper, they'd beat him down and turned him into a broken man. There was nothing left, and he thought that maybe his wife had been right in riding out of it on the bottle.

Wind gusted, and he was a giant, carrying all of the rage and hate of mankind as fury against the wall. Blood ran, and flesh tore as he hammered at it with his fists, but it didn't come down. It couldn't come down when it had already fallen. All it could do was boom and amplify the misery like a hollow drum.

Jeff awoke on the spit and instantly remembered getting smashed and walking out of the city. The spit wasn't much better than the alleyways he'd been sleeping in. It was a large chunk of land composed of garbage and fill, and it extended into the lake. It had its share of stunted trees, wildlife, and mutant grass. It also had groundwater so poisonous it would eat your flesh like battery acid.

Waking was nearly as bad as dreaming. He was in a hobo roost, and it was early morning, the sun sailing up high and rust-tinted in the trailing greenhouse exhaust of the nearby city. A number of bums were passed out in the dirt and cardboard around him. On one side stood shabby huts of crate-board, corrugated tin, and cardboard. Thorn bushes and stunted trees were to his left, and gulls squawked directly overhead. Across from him was a pond of industrial waste. In the distance, sailboats drifted on milky Lake Ontario.

Licks of sulfur and filaments of silver spun among green bubbles and strands of foul brown smoke. As he tried to settle his swimming head, he unwittingly focused on a blob of dark mud floating to shore. He was sure his life was over. He wasn't physically finished like the bums around him, but he was fast on his way. The binges were getting worse, and he had little to live for anyway. He'd no property left and a tax debt compounding to mind-boggling numbers. His wife was buried, and his daughter was a hooker … his son was armed and dangerous on those rare days when he got out. For Jeff, the bottle of life was empty. Now it was time to choke on the dregs at the bottom, and to be better than the rest. If you knew you were dead, killed by fate, you were better than the others who were too blind to know.

On the shore, the lump of mud began to crawl like a worm, and Jeff's negative thoughts vanished as he studied it. Sometimes it shimmered like a bluebottle fly, and at other times it was slime-green. It had a way of sliding forward that was quicksilver smooth, and it moved right up to the closest wino - a guy with a sherry face of popped veins - formed a gross sucker at its front and glued itself to the man's forehead.

For a second, Jeff was sure he'd become a hallucinating wet brain already, but when the worm oozed in the man's ear, the horror of it became the truth. It wasn't long, and the bum's eyes opened. They were lifeless eyes, a dead-as-maggots stare.

The shakes hit him; Jeff began to rise, but before he was halfway up, a muzzle flash caught his eye. There was a crack and a heavy, dull thud as the head of the derelict behind him became the leading edge of a slapping splash of blood and brain matter.

Jeff threw himself to the side, rolled, and crawled off through Frisbee-sized mushrooms. Crushed cans, rotted canvas, and heaps of cigarette butts marked the edge of some thorn bushes, and while they screened him, a couple more shots thundered into the roost.

Reaching a mound of iron ore pellets, Jeff moved out of the brush and tried to spot the gunman. A small dump was beyond the mound, and the killer was on the far side of it, reloading in a patch of crabgrass. He was blond, Nordic, a bodybuilder wearing brown slacks and a checked hunting jacket. From his angle, he wouldn't have seen the pond worm in the man's ear, and it was some of the others he'd shot. That meant he was a pure killer, an off-duty cop or a vagrant-hater out shooting bums on the spit for Saturday morning sport; maybe even a Neo-Nazi out for practice.

Jeff felt anger convulse, close like a claw in his stomach. The killer took a new form. He became the embodiment of everything Jeff hated - the lucky, sophisticated guy who had nothing better to do than exterminate the unfortunate. A new breed of man that had emerged a few years back, when kicking the downtrodden became politically popular. Jeff swore under his breath. He intended to get even. It would be a final strike at the authority he'd always hated. It was the one thing he had left: his belief that all authority, every man, every system had to be challenged. If the enemy had taken shape as a killer, then maybe it was because it had killed his life already.

Moving from behind the ore heap, Jeff dashed through the dump, dodging decaying furniture, rusted drums, and spikes of broken glass and metal. He got halfway across before a huge spring caught his foot and threw him into the rusted-out hulk of a pickup truck.

Hearing Jeff fall, the gunman spun around and fired. The slug hit the wreck with the wham of a heavy metal fist and opened up the hood like it was the lid of a sardine can.

Jeff kept moving, ducking behind wet heaps of cardboard and newspaper, continuing his advance on the gunman. Two slugs pounded at his heels, then he saw the gunman move to reload. Favoring his weak leg, Jeff rushed into some bushes, finding cover before the gunman could trigger again.

Rays from the swollen sun glossed the sweat on the gunman's brow. His expression was intense, and he seemed about to lose his cool. It was obvious that he hadn't expected one of the bums to fight a war with him. He shuffled around nervously in the crab grass, looking for his target.

Jeff had taken note that his weapon was a three-shooter, and he began by tossing an empty Five Star sherry bottle. The gunman fired and shattered it where it landed, and then he scratched his head and moved over into the dump.

Positions were now reversed, with the gunman behind a mound of crushed bricks and Jeff near the patch of grass. It was time to take a risk; Jeff emerged from the bushes and dived at the edge of the grass, getting behind a weedy mound as a slug kicked up sod.

Risking it again, Jeff popped his head out. A slug whistled by and sawed a limb off a dead maple. And that was the three. He'd have to load another clip.

Litter, wind, and dust flew through every alleyway, through the hard years of Jeff's life. His teeth and jaws were locked bands of iron. Limping, beaten man that he was, he pulled up strength from discarded dreams, crumpled steel, and rust. Jeff was a gaunt man, a half-crippled man; his face was scarred and creased and dark with stubble. But it was the eyes that told his story; they weren't wino dead, they were white embers, hot with fire from a life too terrible to think about.

It was too late to shoot, so the gunman tried to bash Jeff down with the barrel, and he found it was too late for that, too. Jeff plowed into him like a train, thrusting rusted metal into his belly. It penetrated like the jagged fender of a wreck, then a hot river poured between his legs, and flame was in his eyes as his intestines spilled out on the spit.

Jeff picked up the gun and found it was a TAR-HUNT Slug Rifle. Only a monster would hunt with such a weapon. It was like killing ants with boulders. Yet it was loaded, and Jeff figured he might need the three shots. He was going back for the poor guy with the worm eating his brain, to put him out of his misery.

There was little to contemplate other than the screech of gulls and the birthmark-colored clouds slipping over the sun. He was thirsty, and he knew there was no clean water on the spit. He would have to find a bottle. He needed a bit to prevent the hallucinations from withdrawal, not just thirst. Then, as he came off the earth path leading to the roost, he forgot his thirst.

Three men had been decapitated by the TAR-HUNT slugs, and the corpses were mounds of raw flesh, crawling with ants and horseflies. The premature carrion stink was so vile that the roost was impossible to enter. The other derelicts had fled, four or five of them, and the guy with the pond worm in his brain was also gone.

Scouting for them, he doubled around to the far side of the makeshift huts. Fat drops of blood led up to the ramshackle construction. A huge peeling Pepsi sign served as a door. It had once been electric; now it shone with traces of blood.

Jeff's hunter instinct made him hesitate. He picked up a stone and heaved it at the side of the hut. There was shuffling on cardboard and a moan of pain inside.

The door began to creak open. Something felt wrong, so Jeff raised his weapon. A man came out slowly. He was dragging his feet, his arms hung limp, and his entire body was alive with bloodsucking worms. Only his mouth was clear, and it poured with blood and moaning.

As the door blew shut, Jeff squeezed the trigger, the kick of the gun hitting him like a horse's hoof. He saw the man's middle disappear in a whirlpool of violet as he was thrown against the Pepsi sign. It crumpled easily as tinfoil, and the wall fell apart, a spray of gore and worms shooting in to coat the interior.

Gray light washed in, and Jeff saw the other bodies, all of them crawling with worms, except the original one. And he knew it only by the shoes, because the body was now wrapped in a milky web.

Shooting would be pointless. Fire was a better idea. He fumbled for his lighter, and as the silver flashed from his pocket, the webbing on the man's head began to split.

A green-purple tentacle waggled out. Blister-like suckers lined its underside. It got a hold of the wall and pushed out two more tentacles, and then it pulled itself the rest of the way out. Chunks of skull fell away and hung on hinges of webbing as it oozed up the wall. There were six tentacles in all; the man's brain made the body. It pulsed with several colors of ghastly liquid and had knobs of varicose veins at the bases of the tentacles. A huge blister in the center appeared to be a morbid eye.

Jeff's teeth chattered. He decided to shoot, but when he raised the rifle, he found that he couldn't will his trembling finger to pull the trigger. Throwing the gun down, he went back to the lighter and had the same problem again when he tried to start a fire.

The brain worm was now moving toward him in the same easy way it'd moved when it had been tiny. Hate was another set of tentacles emanating from it. Paralyzing hate. Jeff could feel its loathing of him, and it was a tangible thing, as real as the green wisps of poison over the place of its birth. It invaded his mind, screaming with a power of murderous extermination. Blistered tentacles shot like lightning to the roots of his soul. Razor ribbons of pain twisted in his bowels. Burrowing down, the creature found the umbilicus it needed to sever to end his existence.

And then a dam burst. Another kind of hate - fire-bright - emerged. Jeff's hate, his loathing of a world that had robbed, poisoned, and deadened him. All of the angry faces flooded up like a grotesque bubbling of blood; their hunger an inner rain of glass splinters and knives.

Jeff heard the creature scream from the pain of it. It was about to put a tentacle on his foot. He kicked it away violently and watched it retreat to the fallen hut.

Jeff's heart was thumping; its beat strengthened. The creature had crawled to the bottom of him, and he'd refused to die. Just like that, he could refuse to die for everyone else.

Running to the farthest hut, he set fire to it with his lighter and watched as the flames licked up fast. Moving around the huts, he created a circle of flame that quickly grew to a roaring column of crimson and soot. And he didn't wait around; he turned and dashed across the spit wasteland, getting a hundred yards before the screaming of the burning brain worm began. The sounds were psychic emanations, sharp bone fragments exploding in his head.

He stumbled and began to crawl on the lumpy earth, and in time, his mind cleared. The city was ahead, like another monster, with tentacles of smog. He could see that it lived out of death, greed, envy, and hate. Yet his own hate was gone, burned to ashes with the brain worm. Somehow, the creature had saved him, exorcised him, and his thirst for life had returned. He knew he would go on to a new life. He would still limp, but he'd no longer be crippled by self-pity and hate.

--the end--

Hungry Visions

By Gary Morton

Daydream-filtered memories drifted like flotsam in Ralph's mind. The pert, birdlike face of an old sweetheart popped up and cloned itself along a bleached alley fence, working to make a couple of old Chevy wrecks glamorous; then he had a flash of the red sports car that had severed his brother Jack's legs at the kneecaps.

People were streaming in and out of the subway, and if any of them noticed Ralph, it was because his sad face was close to being a joke-store glasses-nose-and-mustache mask. He had a familiar look; he was a fool people knew from somewhere.

The words 'SPARE CHANGE' slipped easily off his lips every few seconds, like they were words he knew and revered. As he spoke, he saw things through slow waves of manageable thoughts. He preferred to keep the painful stuff buried. And today he was practically inspired; the sunrise was healthy flesh, and he felt like much more than a shadow-edged bruise on the wall.

Some silver was rattling in his pocket, so he muffled it with a Kleenex as he went back to the wall. Across the street, two interesting guys were coming up the alley. A short, wiry guy in a faded blue suit made quick gestures and spilled out words while carrying a sign. He was so spry that his sandals barely kissed the pavement. His companion was young and plump, dressed in a weird array of secondhand clothing - baggy blue pants, a neon T-shirt, a flower-print vest, and a rainbow-colored silk scarf. Black-and-yellow bumblebee-style runners topped off the outfit.

The little guy held up his sign and stopped the traffic as they crossed the road, and the plump guy looked Ralph straight in the eyes and winked provocatively. Ralph didn't wink back; he backed tight against the wall, his face souring as he saw they were setting up shop beside him.

The sign had a support peg, and the little guy had a fistful of flyers, which he began passing out. His weird partner unhooked a tiny drum from his side belt loop and sat cross-legged on a square of cardboard. He looked ridiculous, tapping his fingers on the tiny toy drum; his hair was nearly a clown's yellow fright wig, and he wore a placid expression like an idiot Buddha.

Ralph was usually reserved, but now he was unable to contain himself. These were pros he'd be unable to compete with, so he put on his most dangerous face - a face that might tempt some people to get out a fly swatter - and cleared his throat loudly. “If you guys are running a swindle, you'd better move along to another station. The blue jackets always lay out fines in this neighborhood.”

“You don't read too well for a guy with glasses thicker than plastic yo-yos,” the little guy said. “We're businessmen.” He pointed to the sign.

Ralph studied the sign. A DOLLAR A VISION, it said. “Why, that's fraud; no one has visions to sell.”

“I'm Moses Murphy, and I have visions to sell. Ain't that right, Marvin?”

Marvin looked up from his drum. “That's right. Say, pal. Just to show you we're on the level, I'll give you a free vision. Come over here and hold my hand.”

“Not on your life,” Ralph said, starting to back away.

“Don't be afraid,” Moses said. “That's the way it's done. You gotta touch Marvin to make contact.”

“Okay. I'll touch him, but only to expose this scam you guys are running. And you better not try to pick my pocket either.”

Up close, Marvin's face looked artificial, like a pale wax apple, and his eyes sparkled and darted, putting Ralph in mind of Jenny Figuerada, a waitress he'd been engaged to back before he locked the president of the Commerce Bank in a vault and got put out of security work. Jenny's eyes and face didn't belong together, like a stranger was using her eyes. Marvin also puckered his lips like Jenny - fish style.

Marvin's playful mood vanished under the cold weight of Ralph's stare. Like a mock zombie, he held up a limp hand, and Ralph took it, looking at it suspiciously like it might be something dead.

Nothing happened other than that he felt like an idiot, then a foul odor wafted in, and he gagged. He felt his neck crack, and vile medicine somehow got on his tongue.

The pain came suddenly, like a boxer had jabbed him on the jaw. Curtains of blood spilled and twisted in front of him, and he could feel clammy hands caressing his legs. He was staggered, yet he couldn't move; the blood vanished, and he saw a mound of swollen, blackened corpses.

A fetid odor drifted from them, and the worst part was their faces. They were contorted like they'd died having a vision of something abominable, and they were the faces of regulars he hit on while panhandling.

Bat wings flapped like canvas in his ears, then he saw a vampire bat land; using claws and folded wings, it skittered up the corpses and drank blood flowing from a small fountain at the top. Ralph's vision zoomed in. Horrible things in miniature were in the blood, visions of more corpses rolling and a million different death-head grins. He thought he saw hunger there, but it was more like a devil's hunger for your soul than anything else.

The bat took flight, and its wings became waves of darkness that consumed Ralph. Next thing he knew, he was backed up against the wall. He'd vomited, and he could hear Marvin and Moses laughing uproariously.

Moses remained jolly, moving like a marionette, his worn suit flashing as he led Marvin closer to the subway entrance. Ralph's feet were filled with lead, as if he were digesting an elephant tranquilizer. His mind expanded, and he watched events flow by as if he were the sky. Quite a number of people were attracted by the vision pitch, and almost all of them stumbled away in shock. The exceptions were an old hag, a blond girl with a spider web on her cheek, a biker, a hooligan, and several ordinary business and secretarial types. They all smiled like death and made sure they pocketed one of the flyers.

Two beat cops suddenly popped out of the alley, startling Ralph as they brushed past him. They went straight to Moses and arrested him, saying they had received a complaint. Marvin looked unconcerned. He remained, tapping on his drum as Moses was led away. A minute later, he got up, fastened his drum to his belt loop and strolled off down the street.

Ralph tailed Marvin without even thinking why, following him through a willow-dripping park, down some railway tracks, and through some sumac and pines. Marvin got out of sight in the trees, and Ralph crept over pine duff and twigs until he reached a clearing. He found Marvin waiting for him in the field, his hands on his hips and disgust on his face.

Ralph smiled sheepishly, then his face fell as Marvin hissed and ran at him. Falling to his knees, Ralph held out his hands protectively. But he didn't have to fend off an assault. Marvin stopped dead just before he got to him and began to laugh like a crazy man.

“So you had a hungry vision,” Marvin said.

“Nope,” Ralph said.

“You must've seen something. Come into my palace, and we'll talk.”

Marvin's palace was a tramp's hovel made of warped plywood sheets, tin and vegetable-oil cans. So much bird crap was stuck to it that it appeared to be dripping. Ralph ducked inside reluctantly.

“Moses isn't handling you right,” Ralph said. “You should just shake hands. I could lift a few dollars from each mark.”

“I could do it that way. The way it is, Moses gives a flyer to the hungry ones, and they show up at a meeting so I can channel their perverse visions. They give all their money. And they have to be channeled clear. The hungry ones like the visions. They're like dogs that have tasted human blood and have an appetite for more.”

“Moses may be away for a while. You'll need a new manager, like me, for example.”

“Moses is my only friend. Since I got the power six months ago, nobody can stand to touch me. I really don't need to be used by an opportunist like you.”

Ralph was suddenly sorry for Marvin, and he wanted to wallow in self-pity with him. “No one can stand to touch me either. I just want a friend, that's all.”

“Okay, but we've got to settle up with the people I touched today. You can come to the meeting with me and collect the money while I channel away their blood thirst.”

Vagrant neighborhoods and the gutters of the nation were sunny memory lanes in their recollections; Marvin pulled out a six-pack and listened raptly as Ralph told stories of places he'd been run out of. Sometimes, Marvin added a tale of his own, but he remained strangely silent when asked for further details on the power he had gained.

The afternoon was slipping through their fingers, and then Marvin suddenly jumped up and stared as if he could see something in the white bird crap dust floating in a sliver of sunlight. “Holy shit, we're late for the meeting! Let's get moving.”

Once they got to the street, Marvin pulled out some loose bills, and they stood like transient clowns in the blooming city spring. A Yellow cab came along, and the longhaired driver wasn't averse to breaking the speed limit. Asphalt snapped under the wheels like a rubber snake, and they pulled in at a soot-blackened red brick building. It was abandoned and had a huge smokestack, like something from back in the Industrial Revolution days.

“Here you go, boys. 262, the old slaughterhouse,” the driver said.

They spotted some cars on the side and walked across the gravel lot. Ralph was unsure if they were in the right place. The building was like a time-tunnel object standing against a background of freeways. It had a power of desolation, as if it were the wasteland heart of the city.

“I can't imagine anyone meeting here other than a group of unemployed butchers,” Ralph said.

“Moses picked the place,” Marvin said, kicking open a rusty gate. “It's private, and the rent is attractive.”

The front door was battered, scarred. “Wait,” Ralph said as Marvin was about to open it. “Did you hear that?”

“It's just wind shaking through the cracks.”

Ralph nodded, but he still thought he heard a faint animal-like huffing.

Marvin swung the door open, and sunlight flooded part of a dim passage. A blond girl was hunched against the wall, her head hanging down under drifting cobwebs, bobbing some as she heaved up sighs.

Believing she was in distress, Ralph hurried to her aid; he touched her arm, and she lifted her face. It was the girl with the spider web on her face; only her face was now drained of color, and her eyes were vacant.”

“You okay?” Ralph said.

Rather than answer, she latched onto him and sank her teeth into his thigh, causing him to howl and drag her back as he tried to shake her loose. Her teeth sank deeper; he tripped and grabbed Marvin as he went down on the rotten floorboards. His head banged the wall, and a vision came over him. He saw a vampire hag, hollowing her cheeks as she sucked blood from his torn flesh. She lifted her crimson face, and her eyes shone with mesmerizing lust. Then a soft tapping began; the lines on her face became shadowy, and her ugliness faded as she fell back. As his vision cleared, he saw Marvin gently pulling her to her feet with one hand while tapping his drum with the other.

Ralph tied his shirt around his wounded leg, keeping a suspicious eye on the girl, who was now still as a zombie.

“We're too late to stop the hunger,” Marvin said. “It's a good thing there are no victims around here.”

“What am I, yesterday's hamburger?” Ralph said. “Let's get out of here before more weirdoes jump us.”

“We'll take a peek inside first, and then we'll split.”

At the end of the passage, there was another door. A throaty howl sang through the cracks, lifting Ralph's hair before it slid down his spine with his shattered courage. His eyes reached out of his head, almost enough to hold the door shut.

Marvin maintained a cool expression, pushed Ralph back, guided the blond to the door, pushed her through, and then slammed it. Madhouse screaming, tortured moans, banging, and thumping were followed by grotesque slurping sounds and scraping. Marvin raised his eyebrows and gave Ralph a follow-me signal, but Ralph couldn't move; he could only watch as Marvin vanished in the gray gloom.

A minute alone proved to be a formula for terror. He regained the power to move, along with the power to probably jump through the wall. He ducked into the room in search of Marvin.

The place resembled a giant medieval dungeon. Sunlight was leaking through the cracks, cutting the general gloom and falling as bars on a floor of earth and crumbled concrete. The dirt was like camel-dung hashish; vile odors rose, and they had a near-gaseous power of levitation.

Marvin was standing by a post, watching dim figures move on the other side of the room. Forms that mingled and tumbled like a strange play of shadows.

Ralph hurried over to Marvin and, without thinking, grabbed his arm. Immediately, the forms became clear: the blond girl was streaked with blood and dirt, rocking on her butt as she tore with her nails at a wound she'd just opened in her leg. Beyond her, a biker in a black leather jacket was sprawled over a small heap of mutilated corpses. Crazy hunger was on his blood-smeared face as he stared at a gruesome chain of sausage slipping in his filthy hands.

There were other people lying broken and contorted on the floor. Some were alive, sucking blood and cannibalizing body parts. One bald man was chewing on a rat.

Assuming it was a hallucination he'd got from Marvin, Ralph waited for it to pass. But it didn't pass; it only got uglier.

Marvin turned to him, and his eyes were a deep well that threatened to boil up with more unspeakable things. Before he could say anything, a skeleton-thin naked man dropped from a rafter and knocked Ralph to the ground. In a flash, he was on Ralph's chest, his teeth snapping like a buzz saw, horrible blood spittle dribbling from his mouth.

Hysteria shot up Ralph's spine; he caught the teeth with his forearm, jumped up, and began battering the man against a post. The force cracked his skull, and blood and tissue shot out. A moment later, the man slid to the floor, and Ralph fled, striking out wildly at the shadows as he made his way to the door.

Sunset colors hit him like an explosion, and he ran in circles in the parking lot, then wandered in a daze. A dam of guilt and emotions threatened to burst and snap his mind. Covering his eyes, he shook his head, ran off, and cowered behind a tool shed.

He was still crouched and shivering when Marvin emerged, looking like a man on his way to a Sunday picnic. Marvin spotted Ralph, strolled over, and put a hand on his shoulder. It was a healing hand that burned the taste of death off his tongue. Trauma was channeled away.

“Doesn't matter so much about them anyway,” Marvin said. “It's only evil people who go mad from the visions. They're the hungry ones. Tomorrow we'll make sure we take their money first, before we send them here to the meeting.”

--the end --

The Power of Voodoo

By Gary Morton

His feet flew, ghost-swift, finding impossible support on the gleaming patches of ice. They carried him along smoothly. He was a dark shadow racing with the night as the stars pinwheeled above. He reached the final row of snowy backyards and approached a high brick wall. Without slowing, he went up the wall, skittering like a human fly.

The spotlights hit him, revealing his ski mask and black clothing. Every moment of hesitation was a moment in which he could be spotted, and the boost of fear sent him up the wall quicker than midnight lightning. Several meters up, he came to a large segmented window of colored glass. He cut out a blue segment, went through, and dropped to the floor.

He still had the glass in his hands. Holding it in front of his face, he looked at the blue vision and laughed. Then he discarded it in a trash bin and checked his tools.

This was the subway, one of the automatic entrances, and breaking into it didn't make him look all that clever. At least not for a terrorist. Despite that, euphoria swept through him as he worked. With great satisfaction, he set the gate timer back and rigged it to his detonator. It was all very easy; not that he was a genius, as the planning had been done by other men. His training in the arts of break-and-enter had made this job possible.

He was almost done when he found a note, a greasy piece of paper wrapped behind the timer. His eyes slowly absorbed the words, and then he looked at the tiny bits of crystal embedded in his fingertips and began to shake.

It unnerved him so much he had difficulty finishing the job, and when he was done, he went back over the wall in a panic, like a man fleeing demons. He thought he saw the shadow of the devil looming over him in the snowy back yards. But behind the fear, he knew the job had been done, and that was all that really mattered.

At 6:20 a.m., the first bus arrived, and a crowd gathered at the locked gates. Five minutes later, a transit inspector unlocked a side entrance, and the crowd continued to grow as he failed to free the main gates.

Ice, snow, and a leaden winter sky … the wind chill was -10, and the explosion got added to that total numbness and misery of Monday morning. The timer turned over, and the heavy metal gates blew off their hinges, punching into the crowd like the mailed fists of an angry god. Ten people became one with the wasteland, and many others would never be the same again. Later in the day, city mini plows had to scrape frozen blood from the split asphalt.

An Arctic wind howled in the minds of many people, and some prayed their loved ones would find more than ice and cruelty at the end of the world. The same wind howled in Desmond's mind, but it wasn't because of grief. Then out of the howling came the buzz of the phone.

“Well done,” the man said. “The Canadian government has paid the price. Freedom for Haiti! Yes, brother, freedom!”

Desmond hung up, and his eyes fell on the wilted note he'd found while planting the explosives. -- BEWARE, Anyone who tampers with this timer. The crystals on it are poisonous. It is voodoo, the poison of a witch doctor that I bought in Haiti. You have one day to find me and get the antidote, or you will die horribly. -- JAKE the SNAKE.

Black quicksilver swam in Desmond's eyes as he dropped the note. How could this Jake the Snake know that he, Desmond, would one day tamper with the timer? Why would the note be there ahead of him? It could only be voodoo.

Desmond knew of the poisons. They were real and not a rumor. He had always hated talk of voodoo and zombie drugs. He hated the stories like the one about Haitians digging up corpses and scooping out mouthfuls of ripe maggots. Another story accused voodoo priests of creating AIDS through abominable sex acts with the dead. Yet as much as he hated the stories, he believed in the power of voodoo. He had seen too much evil. Many of his friends and relatives back home were evil, and he believed voodoo to be the force of corruption.

He was supposed to sit tight and not go out for weeks. Order everything in. If he told the others he'd been poisoned, they'd tell him to die with his lips sealed - tell him it was important that he be a hero.

A bar of twilight showed in the crack in his curtains, and it made him feel like a prisoner. By his calculation, he had until 3 a.m., and then death would take him. To hell with it, he thought. Pain was running like rats in his legs, but it wasn't so bad. A few drinks and he'd feel all right. It would be better to go out and have some quiet drinks at a bar before he died.

He threw the curtains open dramatically, like a monster greeting nightfall, and then he stepped back and blinked. A terrible hallucination nearly blinded him. There was no city outside, only twilight, and it slowly formed a huge, hideous mask.

Sparks flew from the eyes, and it whirled, then it shot in the window and spun like a carousel on the walls. Somehow, it got behind him, and he could no longer find it. As he turned in a circle, a terrible thought hit him - the mask was now on his face. He was seeing the world through its power.

Cold twilight fell outside. The streets and buildings were blue and ice-cold. Wind whipped over it all with a killer's whistle and razor sheets of hail. People were moving in the hostile streets like zombies, wandering aimlessly. Their faces swollen, bruised, and hanging with mats of frozen blood and frost. Some had eyes of icy tears; others had only purple holes. They gestured with bony hands, some of them without fingers or arms. A frosting of pus sealed the gashes in their chests, and they scraped along on feet that were frozen solid.

Desmond wanted to cover his eyes, but his hands wouldn't obey him. They would only tremble, and when he lifted his eyes from their trembling, he saw other hands. The hands of some hellish creature. They looked like they'd been torn from their arms by a beast with superhuman strength. Ropes of gore and flesh trailed from the wrists as the crooked fingernails scratched at the glass.

A pattern of pentagrams formed in frost as the hands continued to move, and then pieces began to fall, tinkling on the ledge. A moment later, the hands were in and crawling toward him.

Stumbling back, he dropped to his knees, staring in frozen horror as the bluish hands reached his legs and moved upward. He watched them settle on his genitals, then he gasped and screamed.

It filled his lungs with pain, and the agony silenced him. Out the window, he saw a wolfish devil stride up to the window. He tossed up his black cloak, and darkness and arctic cold swept in. A glow from the hands and the red of blood stained his crotch. Madness was upon him, and it was more than any man could bear. He had to fight this somehow. Crawling to the phone, he dialed an emergency number.

It was 3 a.m. when the emergency crew picked up Jake the Snake. Jake resembled an easygoing man with long hair and gold earrings. Though he looked like a subway maintenance man to most people, he looked like a terrorist to the cops. Their questions earlier in the day had been designed to ferret out a confession. Now they were working on another suspect and had to treat him with respect.

“So you're saying there's no antidote?” said the cop at the wheel.

“I'm saying there is no poison. I put notes and bits of crushed glass in all the automatic mechanisms I repair. The idea is to scare anyone who wants to tamper with things off before they do too much damage.”

“But this terrorist is obviously under the influence of a very powerful narcotic? He's screaming like the suffering is something wicked.”

“It just happens that your suspect believes in the power of voodoo,” Jake said. “When you believe strongly in voodoo, it becomes real.”

The cop grinned like he was glad there wasn't a cure, and Jake touched his chest, feeling the amulet he wore under his shirt. The antidote was inside it, but it would stay hidden. He'd already destroyed the poison he'd planted in the other mechanisms, and he planned to make sure they never identified the structure of the crystals. The weathered face of an ancient voodoo priest appeared in his mind, and it was his stepfather, reminding him that he had to protect the secrets, no matter what the cost.

--the end—

Burial

By Gary Morton

Forks of lightning sizzled in the sky, making it an eye, bloodshot with electric veins. A bolt splintered off and struck a twisted oak tree, and it rocked from the blow, showering down rain and branches. Thunder boomed, more debris slapped the mud, and then the nightmare rose and possessed him again.

A moldered corpse was struggling to rise from the bottom of an open grave; around him were tombstones, mud, and slashing rain. He was almost too frightened to flee, and he couldn't run from this; if he didn't snuff it out and bury it, it would pursue and destroy him.

His grip on the shovel was slippery, but he fought the terror, determined to foil the conspiring dead. His hair sailed with spray; his features were as wild and twisted as the wind. The thing came up in a scrambling leap from the bottom of the grave and jammed skeletal hands in the reddish graveside mud. He brought the shovel down, cracking it against the wrists, and he continued swinging, trying to knock it down. His clothes snapped in the tearing rain, his motion frenzied like he was a hurricane-kicked scarecrow, caught in a nightmare image of graves and gnarled black trees.

Its skull was as hard as stone, and its neck ropes of blackened muscle; he drove it back, inch by inch, into the grave. A final vicious blow and it fell, then he relaxed, feeling hot urine stream down his leg. Lightning made a spider web, and it came up again. Its face was over the lip of the grave, and its stare had a hideous mesmerism that iced his blood. A bleeding tongue showed through splintered teeth and swollen lips. Green ooze slid out of its smashed nose, and the maggot whites of its eyes rolled. Its forehead was a wall of purple welts, and it clawed the mud with torn hands, crawling closer and closer.

A bony hand seized his ankle. Screaming, he kicked free, drove the shovel into its shoulder, and shoved it back over the lip of the grave. Then he began to shovel mud on it, desperately hoping to bury it before it came up again.

Jim awoke with a jolt, finding his bed fouled by sweat. And his waking wasn't much better than his dreaming. His thoughts whirled, refusing to come clear, and he knew it was because of the maggots squirming in his brain. He could feel them, a cancerous pulp at the roots of his thoughts.

A somber, empty world was out the window, slate skies and mud. A rush of whispering blew across his mind like cobwebs spilling from a point behind his forehead. The whole scene ran flat; shapeless clay of a dead place. And in the underground, the dead laughed and convulsed. Indoors, he was dry, his brain crumbling rot for the maggots. Months ago, the maggots had crawled in his ears, making his brain a radio tuned to the channels of the dead. Months ago, the conspiracies of the dead had begun. It wasn't schizophrenia that had set in; the others could believe that if they wanted, but Jim knew better.

He dressed slowly, with grim determination in his silent ways. Others would have succumbed to the madness; they would already be screaming in the streets. Yet Jim hadn't given in, and he didn't care about madness. There was an enemy - the maggots and the dead - and he struggled through each day, telling others nothing, looking weak and pale as his life slowly faded.

A theatre-mask face, some fire above the dark orbits of the eyes, looked back from the mirror, and over the inner frequencies, he could hear the appalled whispering of the dead. They moaned, and their moldered sinews snapped as they struggled against the cruel earth. Forcing life into his face, he turned and prepared to leave for work.

Clammy cold gripped him as he stepped outside. A clattering of skeletons rode the wind. Not a good day for walking, but he had to - his Ford was possessed, an engine of the dead. If he got behind the wheel, it would steer him to one of the many accidents about to happen. He was sure of it.

Without giving the car a second glance, he crunched up the gravel path to the rise. A graveyard was at the top, and more graveyards were on the little hills that stretched like breasts of bloated corpses into the city.

Fog tentacles crowned the trees, their movement poisonously slow. Cold drizzle fell from scudding black clouds, and the chill massaged his muscles with fingers of icy misery. Today, even the dead had been numbed. It was on sunny days that they were most active, forbidding him the pleasure of the light, tearing at his coffin-lid skull with hands of splintered bone.

At the crest of the hill, he met a shovel and an open grave. Behind his forehead, the maggots pulsed in a wavelength of pain, and as he cringed, it became wicked screaming. The dead had opened the grave for him, he knew, and he stumbled away, down toward a black ribbon of highway, hating them for their cruel plans.

As he came to the fence, a red Pontiac squealed around the corner and slid to a halt. A burly man wearing a flannel hunting jacket got out on the passenger side. Jim could see him clearly: his silver earring, cunning face, and strong neck. A Colt pistol was stuffed in his belt.

“Agents of the dead,” Jim thought as the Oriental driver got out. “Poison!” the dead screamed in his head as the driver threw a plastic bag full of hypos into the ditch.

An argument ensued. Wind snatched away the voices, and a branch swung over the two men like a switch about to strike. The wind picked up, and its shriek found oblivion in an instant.

A raised fist from the Oriental caused his partner to go for his gun. Three shots were fired, opening the man's chest and throwing him into the ditch. The killer took a quick look around. Spotting Jim in the graveyard, he hurried to the fence.

Fortunately, the fence was tall and made of black-painted iron. Jim knew the guy would have a hard time getting over it in the rain. Slugs popped through the bars as Jim slogged up the hill. One thumped the mud by his feet, and then he was safe behind a tree.

“Bastard son of the dead!” Jim yelled from the hilltop.

Perhaps the architects who built cobwebbed canyons like the main sorting terminal were also tuned into the dead. Jim believed that the dead worked through them in some way. Their factory hells were built in anticipation of the end to come. “I must witness with the eyes of the dead,” Jim thought as he walked with his pink slip to the payroll department. He was temporary and had been terminated with a bunch of other guys when he'd arrived. He figured on getting his promised severance and returning home. The voices of the dead told him that one of the other guys was going to shoot the office staff, and he didn't want to be around when it happened.

“We'll all be dead together,” Jim said, startling some of the office staff as he picked up his check. He left the post office carrying the contents of his locker in a small shoulder bag. Some of the union boys watched him pass. They had years of yellow postal dust in their wrinkles, and whiskey flasks in their pockets that made dingy rooms rosy and bright. Jim saw the maggot whites of their eyes and knew they were pawns of the dust that had buried them. They thought they were safe and secure, but they were dead.

Strolling down the rain-slicked streets, he looked for a suitable restaurant. A deli and a cafeteria were the only places he could afford. He settled on the cafeteria because it was brighter, but once inside, he was disappointed. Orange plastic seat covers and stained walls; the place was as decrepit as the thoughts of its rotting patrons. He ordered a clubhouse and let his eyes follow the waitress as he sipped his coffee. Teased blond hair, black net stockings, and a short skirt; she was an angel of sluts. The sort of sleazy dream queen he used to date. Lately, he'd been reduced to voyeurism, since sex was impossible with the dead screaming under the floorboards. The dead hated sex, and he could see it in people, in their hang-ups and desire to bury sex under the floorboards with the dead. He figured you had to be somewhat perverse or else you were in the clutches of the dead.

Dense mist rolled over the rail yards and beaded on his face, wet as tears in a city of sorrow forgotten and rust remembered. Ahead were the hills, their patchwork of tombstones, and the low, angry sky. The coffee in his stomach was the day's only warm glow, and it helped to distance him from the sighs of the dead.

Early afternoon, and the inclement weather left the road empty. He followed the white line, feeling ghost bodies of fog brush past him. He was prepared to turn into the brush as soon as he spotted the police. He hadn't reported the murder; like everything else, he kept it secret, but he assumed a graveyard worker or a motorist would've discovered the body by now.

There were no police or signs of life, just gloom, and it carried him on a dreamlike state to the scene of the shooting. Arriving at the ditch, he found no corpse, and he guessed that the dead had already pulled it under.

A corpse gurgled in his head, and he realized that he shouldn't have returned. He turned away, saw a flash of red, and jumped. The thunder took his heart, and he almost collapsed from the shock. It was the Pontiac, parked under a willow across the road. A blurred face hung behind the rain-streaked windshield. He wasn’t sure if it was the killer. The guy seemed to be on the nod.

“The rotten junkie,” Jim thought as he moved to a spot with a crawl space under the fence. He was just slipping through to safety when the wind gusted, and the trees creaked like a thousand opening coffins. The killer burst out of his car and staggered, a needle still hanging from his arm. Jim knew the dead had roused him, and at first, the junkie sloshed clumsily through the puddles like he was a zombie. His face showed bruise-blue amid a wash of mist, and his lethargy swiftly became athletic prowess as he charged for the fence and Jim.

The killer got under the fence, and the race was on as he chased Jim up the hill. At the top, the wind was howling out of an opening sky, and in Jim's ears it was the mad raving of the dead.

A muffled crack and a chunk of bark flew off a tree, causing Jim to duck lower as he stumbled on the squishy turf. He moved on toward the open grave and the shovel.

Reaching the grave, Jim leaped over it to the mound of earth and the shovel on the far side. Something flashed in his mind; he'd just seen a body sprawled at the bottom of the open grave, a corpse with an Oriental face.

Grabbing the shovel and crouching behind the mound, he watched the killer jog the last few yards up. A mad grin was pasted on his vulpine face; brilliant junkie confidence was in his eyes, death was in his soul. Without hesitation, he leaped over the grave to the top of the mound, planning on plugging Jim with a close shot before he could run or hit him with the shovel.

But the damp earth slipped under his heels. He fired in the air as he fought for his balance, and Jim caught him square in the face with the shovel, sending him tumbling to the bottom of the grave.

Forks of lightning shattered the sky, and a close one ripped into an oak tree. The blow split it like a cannon shot, showering down rain and branches. Thunder boomed, more debris hit the ground, and he knew the nightmare was rising to possess him again.

A killer was struggling to rise from the bottom of the open grave, so he could murder him and leave him to rot amid the evil cackling of the dead. Jim ground his teeth, knowing he couldn't run from this. If he didn't snuff the monster out and bury him, he would be pursued and destroyed.

His grip on the shovel was slippery, but he fought the terror, determined to foil the conspiring dead and their helper.

Jim's hair and face were wild enough to be the howl behind the wind. The killer came up in a scrambling leap from the bottom of the grave and sank bleeding hands into the black mud. Jim brought the shovel down with a hard bash, and he continued swinging hysterically. His clothes snapping from gusts of wind and frenzied movement like he was a hurricane-kicked scarecrow, dancing with a mock shovel by a grave.

The killer's head was as hard as stone and his neck like steel cables, but Jim drove him back, inch by inch, into the grave. A final vicious blow, and he fell. Jim heard him hit the bottom and felt hot urine stream down his leg.

Lightning sheeted the sky with orange neon, and the killer came up again. His face was over the lip of the grave, and the hideousness of it was paralyzing. Green ooze slid out of the smashed nose, and a gory tongue stabbed through splintered teeth and split lips. The forehead was a wall of purpling welts, the eyes rolled to maggot white, and he clawed the mud with bleeding hands. And this time the nightmare didn't end; the thing crawled all the way out of the grave, grasping blindly for him as it crawled around the mound. Jim shivered, dropped the shovel, and fell weeping to his knees as the thing panted and slobbered reddish vomit like a dying beast.

A beast that was stone blind and crazed; it crawled around Jim, then it went up the mound and slipped over into the grave, leaving only a smear in the mud.

With each shovelful of mud, the voices of the dead grew weaker, and when Jim was finished, he heard only the rushing wind, a pleasing sound that covered the dead like leaves and dust. He felt a fire burn itself out in his blood, and he was left refreshingly empty. There weren't many recent memories. What was he doing here, some crazy thing to make peace with the dead? “No matter,” he thought, because he had no more time for morbid things. He was sure there was something better. Before the schizophrenia, he'd been alone, so he had no life to reclaim. Now that the madness was gone, he walked away and, for the first time in a long time, found comfort in the storm.

--the end--

In Defiance of the Witch

By Gary Morton

Jamey studied the trail, finding it hard to believe the tract of Canadian wilderness was his property. He also found it hard to believe his father was dead. It all seemed unreal, hard to grasp, even the sun above, as it surfed toward evening through a pristine blue sky. Lowering his gaze, he saw Luela come to a halt up the path. A white cloud caught the sun, and it became a fleece full of gleams above her. A dusting of early twilight sprinkled out of the light canopy of boughs, tinting her bikini-clad body with blue. Silver flashed in her long dark hair, and she moved like a fallen angel of some alien Rubens. With smooth ease, she tossed a heap of pine boughs out of the way.

As Jamey stepped closer, he spotted the axed end of one of the boughs and wondered who could have cut them. Luela turned to face him, her brow cool despite the effort. Even from several yards away, Jamey could read the invitation in her eyes. Arousal lightened his step, and he had the strange feeling that his genitals were as blue as her tinted flesh.

Luela's full lips, breasts, and hips were fresh springs, secret fountains of love he had to drink from and drown in. When they rose from the duff, salty sweat had stolen some of her purity. Jamey kept her in his arms, and now his genitals really were blue, tinted and softly swollen. He took in the perfume of her hair as he brushed needles and leaf dust from her moist thighs. Life was easy with Luela; he couldn't imagine it any other way.

“Someone's been out here,” Luela said. “I hope they're not watching.”

“This area is totally isolated. My father must've been out here just before he died.”

They slipped on their swimsuits, shorts, and T-shirts, then moved ahead along the path. It narrowed to an almost invisible rabbit run, then widened to the size of a cow path. The cow path only ran for a short distance before spilling out into a clearing. Such a celebration of sunset color was in the sky that if one had synesthesia, it would've sounded like Beethoven at his grandest.

A burial mound stood at the center of the clearing and at the end of a faint trail. They both looked around as they approached it, but nothing else of interest was to be found, just tall grass, weeds, and the screen of evergreens at the perimeter.

On a dimmer day, they would've been spooked, but the sunset was so bright today that the clearing was tinted with uplifting colors. A few yards from the mound, they halted and surveyed it. It was smoothly formed, almost like a breast, and covered with young grasses and weeds. Chestnuts, acorns, and bound tufts of sweetgrass were sprinkled at its bottom. The whole thing wore a skirting of fresh-cut pine boughs.

“It's a beautiful mound,” Luela said, “but I can't imagine what it could be for.”

“It's not old Cree or Iroquois. It's a simulacrum of a burial mound that my father must've made as part of his anthropological work.”

A pale white object protruded partway up the mound. It caught Luela's eye; she nudged Jamey, and they climbed the soft bank.

The object was a tiny doll's hand. Luela took it in hers and pulled gently. It popped like a wine cork. She giggled, and Jamey reached down and stuck his fingers in the earth. He worked around the doll and yanked it out, sending a spray of earth down the mound.

As a doll, it was uninteresting; in fact, it was a man in a blue suit. His tiny silver ring struck Jamey as familiar, but the plastic face had been burned and melted to a featureless hole.

Dizziness came upon him suddenly, and he leaned against Luela. He tried to say something, but his voice failed, and the words came out as a choke. Staggered, he looked up at the blazing sunset, and it suddenly darkened. He saw his father's withered, brown face in the shield of twilight above the mound. Shock staggered him, and he slipped backward and rolled down with the doll in his hand. Luela stumbled and dashed down to him, but he couldn't see her; he came up on his knees and saw a big silver wheel spinning in the sky. Tires screeched; a glass-spilling crash, and the doll gained a glowing face. He was compelled to look; it was his pal Dan, his expression ghastly. A scream tore the tiny face, then it burst into flames.

An explosion made tinsel of the big wheel, and a line of silver blew through the trees. Possessed by the premonition, Jamey got up, ducked past Luela, and raced off, following a vision of silver. Not knowing why, he ran on, crashing through bushes, kicking up duff until he reached the highway.

Horns blared, and drivers dodged Jamey as he ran into town. A ribbon of silver hummed under his feet, giving him speed. A bell tower marked the center of town, and as he headed for it, he heard the terrible screech and crash again. Picking up speed, he rounded the corner of Division Street. There, the premonition ended at a patch of busted windshield crystal.

Exhaustion washed through to his bones, and his stomach bit at him like a devil. He faltered and collapsed to the road, and when he lifted his head, he saw a farmer escaping from a pickup that had hit a lamppost. Behind the stellated windshield of a new Chevy, he saw blood, a blue suit, and then flames.

The flames were tremendous, yet the fireball exploded in such a way that it snuffed itself out. Jamey rushed to the car, searing his hand as he forced the door open. Dan fell partway out, and Jamey caught him, dragging him away from the wreck.

Safety was something he couldn't drag Dan to, as he was already dead and his face was nothing but a hole, a scorched mash of red, white, black, and purple with a severed vein and a crisped slice of tongue protruding. Strangely enough, his blue suit wasn't burned. Jamey dropped the corpse amid the gathering crowd, and then he fell to the blacktop and the total darkness of a blackout.

Death and funerals gave Jamey the feeling of being in a somber black-and-white movie, like an old noir film. Like his father, he had a distaste for all things formal. Dan had enjoyed all things formal, and he would have enjoyed his own funeral. Grim sobriety and hopeless strength: there are men who are too serious, and they pay the price when a thread unravels, and the fabric of their perfect world is torn. Jamey looked at the burnished coffin and figured that sudden death was better for Dan, but that was probably because he saw Dan's life as a dream that could only end in tragedy.

Luela moved to his side. She was a spirit of color in the lingering gloom, and he felt his blood warm as she led him out of the church. The sky was like the rolling brow of an old gray god; a god who had left the churchyard and adjoining graveyard drained to a landscape of ashes and crumbled stone in his dim vision.

“Do you see them?” Jamey said.

“See who?” Luela said.

“The weird people I told you about. The ones I saw at my dad's funeral. They're here.”

Luela studied the graveyard. “Now that you mention it, those people shouldn't be there in the graveyard, not ahead of the reverend, the pallbearers, and the deceased.”

Jamey watched as they moved toward the open grave: gray, shambling men and women - the sort that could blend into any crowd.

“I saw some of them at my father's wake and funeral. When you ask them exactly who they are, you find they're acquaintances so distant that they're not acquaintances at all. They give me the creeps - people who hang out at funerals.”

“More likely it's grief and imagination,” Luela said. “No people are morbid enough to be graveyard groupies.”

Sunshine as bright as trumpets came in the morning, and being a country girl at heart, Luela was happy to see the last of their new furniture arrive. She had everything arranged; all Jamey had to do was guide the men in and show them where to place the stuff. Twenty minutes later, they were closing up the truck. As far as Luela was concerned, her past was in it - she was now settled down. In town, the rumors were that she was too wild to make a good wife, but she knew better than rumors.

As an afterthought, Jamey decided to check the mail before going inside. There was a pile of letters, and they were mostly junk mail, but in spite of that, he tossed them from hand to hand, juggling them like a happy child as he went up the walk.

Luela took the letters and sat down at a wicker table she used for sorting her mail. “This is interesting,” she said. “A letter from Dan. He must've sent it just before the accident.”

Jamey was a touch bemused, looking on as she took the opener and sliced the flap.

“Here we go,” she said as she folded open the letter. "Dearest Luela, Now that Jamey and I are dead, I thought I would explain..."

Jamey's eyes widened as he watched Luela grow pale and fall across the table. Mail spilled to the floor. Quick as a thief, he snatched up the letter and read the rest.

Behind them, the mound rose like a healthy swelling of the fertile earth; they had walked out to the clearing more out of nervousness than anything else. So unsettling was Dan's letter that Luela couldn't sit still.

“I'm going to check on that letter. It might be a forgery, a prank. It doesn't make sense. I mean, Dan being in love with you but never saying so, then planning to kill himself and me. No one can be in love and keep it a secret, not in a small town.”

“He always gave me weird looks,” Luela said, “but I didn't know it was crazy love he had for me. And it wasn't a complete secret - your father knew.”

“How do you mean?”

“I think your father studied so much witchcraft in the course of his work that he became like a witch himself. He built the mound, and he made the doll of Dan. Before the cancer got him, he cursed Dan, killed him with a voodoo doll, so you would live.”

Silence ensued, and they strolled toward the far side of the clearing. The morbid truth rose in their minds and made a skull's mockery of the noontime idyll. At the edge of the clearing, they saw something interesting - just beyond the narrow band of evergreens, there was another clearing.

They looked at one another, then stepped through the trees. It was a field of small mounds with a few stunted evergreens. The mounds were very old, and a longer look revealed some broken gravestones. In most cases, they were only heaps of bleached stone piled on the humps. It became obvious that this was a very old abandoned graveyard, and one where the graves had swollen over time.

A cloud carried a fan of sunbeams across the screen of trees, illuminating the far end of the graveyard and some figures in baggy clothing moving around a mound.

“It's them,” Jamey said. “The funeral creeps.”

Luela shielded her eyes and saw some of the same clumsy, unattractive people she'd seen at the funeral.

“Funny how they're all cast from the same mold,” he said. “Maybe they're one big creepy family.”

Jamey was angrier than frightened as they set off through the mounds. He intended to put the morbid poachers off his land. The fact that the creeps were tenacious and didn't move when they saw him caused his anger to grow.

When Jamey was almost on them, they stirred and congregated on the far side of a grave they had dug up. Even in bright sunlight, they had grayish skin, rheumy eyes, and lifeless hair.

With his full attention on the poachers, Jamey didn't notice what lay in the open grave, but Luela, following timidly at his heels, did. She screamed, grabbed his shoulder, dug in her nails, and refused to let go.

As she shivered on him like a thorn branch, he glanced at the grave. A horribly mutilated corpse was lying in the wet dirt. It was Dan's corpse, and the front of his suit was torn open. His organs had been removed, leaving him with the look of a gutted fish. A featureless mask covered his damaged face. Jamey knew that Dan's organs had been donated, so the ghouls couldn't have stolen them, but they had still desecrated the corpse.

“You filthy ghouls!” Jamey yelled. “Why did you drag the body here?”

“He called to us,” said a hatchet-faced, scarecrow-thin man. “We're trying to bring him back to life here in the witch's graveyard, back to life in defiance of the witch who destroyed him.”

“See how he longs for you,” said a crone wearing a dress as colorless as burlap.

Dan's right hand had grown gnarled like a claw. As Jamey watched it convulsed, opening and closing.

But Jamey's anger didn't melt to fear. He pulled a strand of silver from his pocket. “The witch's graveyard is my inheritance,” he said. “And you'll do nothing in defiance of me!”

Luela continued to shiver. The strand of silver spun, becoming a wheel in Jamey's hand. The corpse quivered, and at first, the ghouls were dumbfounded; then they shielded their eyes and began to cry in pain as they stumbled away from the flash of the talisman and the corpse rising to pursue them.

--the end--

He Only Hunts At Night

By Gary Morton

It was a distant summer day. Sunbeams, the color of fool's gold, lanced through snow-white cumulus towers, and I believed in rushes and energy … not the cruel machine at the end of the world. I was strolling down Huron Street, an easy street of old houses - frame, brick, and Victorian - stretching down into the University of Toronto campus. A good neighborhood, I thought, lots of energy to absorb from the students and the ghosts of the cool people who hang out in this part of town.

My thoughts drifted on the summery breeze, and the motion was perpetual inner peace. Then I saw something interesting - a building with a beautiful aura of energy. It was an apartment house. I crossed the lawn of a co-op, and within fifteen minutes, I was writing a check for apartment 203.

While unloading the van, I looked over at the sprawling architecture of the university library. It gave me a good feeling, but when I got into my place and opened the windows, I had a bad feeling - a concrete tombstone loomed out the window. It was a new building; sinister-looking, with big tinted windows. Everything about the design was too big, square, and efficient.

I let Shadow out of his cage - he'd been sleeping, of course - and he popped up on the windowsill, hissed at the building, stretched, and went back to sleep. It dawned on me then; I'd seen the building in the newspaper - a place of animal experimentation for the university. Most people know the issue, but take away the passion, and you still can't avoid the fact that animals are just flesh to researchers - living cadavers that a god in a white smock has condemned.

If you saw all of the ugliness in the world as a face, it would be the Gorgon, and you would turn to stone. That was the thought that stuck in my mind as I tried to write that night. Light blazed from the research building, and my agitated cat hissed, spat, and caterwauled as he paced back and forth on the sill. When I'd had enough, I went over to close the curtains, and there, directly across from me, I saw a Frankenstein monster of a cat in a cage. The sight of objects protruding from an animal's brain makes for the creeps, and I suppose it gave my black cat more than the creeps. It bothered me, and I wasn't quite sure what to do about it, but mainly I was exhausted from the move. I sat with tension knotting in my head and painful thoughts about the human condition. The end justifies the means - people had all bought that lousy argument. It didn't matter whether the subject was animal experimentation or human cruelty, like our governments trading with totalitarian dictators while pretending the suffering to be just a cultural quirk of foreigners. Evil makes only more evil - I was sure I believed that, and I decided to sleep on it.

I slept soundly until three a.m. when a crash woke me. My window was busted. I rushed to it, figuring the cat had gotten agitated and knocked something through it.

Shadow was gone, so I went outside. A warm wind was swinging the maple boughs, and a full moon hung in the black sky. On the south side, supermarket-bright light spilled from the research building. I figured I could catch Shadow there before he got too far, but the explosions had already started. A blue ball of sparks shot over the rooftops like a UFO, and Shadow's silhouette darkened the building. He suddenly leaped up and came down like thunder on the university building's roof; his eyes glowed like hunter's moons as he struck the front walls with giant paws.

A gang of night-shift workers streamed out of the building's rear doors. They were panicky, and none of them spotted Shadow on the roof. He was the best of hunters, a monster shadow of night with eyes, teeth, and claws of pure energy. Then he vanished through the roof and went inside. I knew his power was ancient, but I couldn’t believe it when I saw animals … cats to rats to dogs and rabbits, clean of electrodes and drugs, running full of health to freedom in the night through a hole suddenly blasted in the wall.

Then Shadow appeared on the roof, looked at me, and suddenly leaped down - a black monster as big as the building itself. Anyone watching from the rear must've thought the whole wall was coming down on me, but all that landed beside me was a shrinking outline and a small black cat with a fluffy tail.

He meowed and faded like a ghost, leaving me to listen to the approaching wail of fire trucks and emergency vehicles. The entire spectacle had me off balance, and I felt the energy shooting through me like metal to a magnet. A man in a bloody white smock was staggering near me, and I noticed my hand beginning to glow, turning to transparent green fire. The change was coming on, so I had to get out of there.

It's a good thing Shadow only hunts at night, I thought. I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dashed off, heading for a safe area of boarded-up warehouses . . . an area where I could hunt at night.

--the end--

The Graveslide

By Gary Morton

Reg sipped his fair-trade coffee quietly, thinking his bloodshot eyes and stiff muscles to be a comfort compared to the guilt gnawing at his soul. He wanted to have a good opinion of himself, but the only self-image he could entertain was dark, corpse-black and blue. Something had rotted inside, either weakness of personality or weakness of the flesh. He wasn't sure what it was, but he knew that the vision of what he'd become was a sluggish nightmare, and he would carry on with it.

Beyond the burger joint's steamy window, a field of weeds shook with wind and rain. It was rain that never ended, and it had dampened his action this summer … like everywhere he went, he got mud in his eye as an increasingly smaller pool of potential victims disappeared like fluttering raincoats into the gloom. Most of this stretch of Scarborough was suburban in appearance, but this was a dead end where high-rises and some weeds trespassed over the borderline to grow tall and unwanted. Scarborough was a faceless place of mixed races; people seemed to blend into a uniform blandness. Reg liked to blend into the scenery in faceless places, like part of their null history. He'd drift on the streets until he did what he had to do, then he’d disappear into bone-white oblivion, waiting for inner darkness to wake him again.

His favorite oldie floated moodily from the radio, but it wasn't really a good day to think about Scarborough Fair. He got up, dumped his tray, and left, banging the door. The wind and slashing rain tore at his hunting outfit. Waves of rain whipped across his dented Ford. His mind was becoming a dismal blank; it always did after a killing. An image of the little boy's battered body in his trunk flashed in his thoughts, then things went blank again.

A bleached white sky illuminated the lake as black clouds drifted on the horizon. The narrow gravel road he turned down rested in misty gloom. The road ran along a lonely, mostly hidden stretch of the bluffs, and the heavy rains had made the area a sudden swamp. He looked for familiar landmarks in the fields of bland mud, but could find none. The feeling was that this place existed in the bowels of Scarborough and every other windy lakeside city in the world.

With disappointment curling his lips, he stopped by a row of dead oak trees near the edge of the bluffs. Exposed roots gripped the mud like the talons of a griffin. Behind the trees, a pond lay like melted chocolate. The pond's bottom would digest a body well; he decided to dispose of it there and got out.

A warm, moist wind blew off the water, but it was an ill wind, like the breath of a zombie. Since the mud was soft, dragging the body would be the easy way. As he worked, he noticed that Lake Ontario was stained and rolling with muck for quite a distance out.

His spade cut into the mud, knifing too deeply. He halted for a moment; the body's gory face was causing his breakfast to leap, so he took a moment and turned it. The mud was heavy, and the hole immediately refilled when he lifted the shovel, so he decided it would be better to get some rocks and sink the body out under a few inches of water.

“Damn!” he said as he noticed his rubbers had sunk a couple of inches into the mud. Reaching down, he held his right rubber as he lifted his foot. The ooze's suction made a loud pop as his foot came out.

Thrown off balance, he nearly fell, unable to regain his footing. Suddenly and silently, his whole world began to shake. Looking up, he saw the oak tree in front of him tilt and pull a section of earth with it as it slid down the bluff. It was a mudslide, and a shift of the mud knocked his feet free. He fell on his butt.

Jabbing his hands into the mud, he used them as an anchor and rode the slide like it was a giant toboggan. As he screamed vile names at the gods, he saw the slide heading for a flat span atop a second steep wall of the bluffs. The frothy lake and certain death were beyond the wall.

With a jolt and an incredible blubbering of ooze, the slide halted on the second wall of the bluffs. The oak tree tilted out over the water, swinging roots and branches like dripping tentacles. Reg turned over to his knees and looked up the slide. A big swell of softer ooze was flowing over the top edge. To save himself, he turned to face the lake and dug in up to his knees. He stood up, and the ooze flowed around him, slowly rising up his ribs, touching him like a filthy molester. Then water came pouring down, and he held his breath as the contents of the shallow pond raced over him.

Waves lifted, broke into silted foam, and seethed against the bluff wall. Reg was up to his armpits in mud, and the stuff stank like an outhouse. The pressure on his torso hurt like a gut punch. He tried to squirm, but found that he couldn't lift himself out. Panic and slime turned his dirty hair to hog bristles. He hollered for help and found that hollering caused the mud to close in and cut off his air. It left him choking, taking shallow breaths.

The slop began to percolate and splatter in his face; some sort of swamp gas was bubbling up, sour and rancid. A blob shot in his right eye, and his hands fought in vain to reach it. He was afraid the gross gas would cause him to vomit and choke to death.

A torrent began; rain showered down, cleansing his eyes and face. When the downpour eased, his eyes began to dart about, looking for hope like a trapped animal might look for hope. A buzzing sound circled his head, and he went cross-eyed. A fat mosquito had lit on his nose. He watched full of misery as the bug grew even fatter, and he felt like one of the kids he'd killed, twisted in the clutches of something as abominable as it was unbelievable.

The mosquito flew off, and he found himself staring straight ahead at an object rising out of the mud. Belching gas lifted it higher and higher. Mud streamed from it, and Reg saw that it was a corpse. It had been in the slop a while and was badly bloated, swelling with pus and rot, a mass of raw maggoty flesh and exploded veins. And it stank so bad that Reg choked and grimaced as he tried to hold his gorge down.

It rose to its hips and had a belly that had fattened to enormous size and was splitting like a rotten vegetable. Violet intestines emerged from the tear, hatching out on the mud like snakes. They were connected to a football-sized spleen gone slimy green. Gobs of congealed gore, a slab of brown liver, and a big red tongue of heart muscle followed; the whole thing was a gross chimera of death and its ugliest decay.

Reg felt ill. All of his life, he'd been an admirer of human organs, but this was incredibly different and disgusting. He'd always kept his body parts in locked, sanitized containers, where he had power over them. Organs on the loose was one of his worst fears.

Terror showed in his dilated eyes as the spleen and intestines slid toward him, but the spleen never reached him; instead, it exploded, throwing a wad of rotten tissue against his lips. Vomit rose, and he choked horribly, certain that it was over, but after a few moments of flaming lungs and long rasps, he was still alive.

A staring eyeball poked out of the mud in front of him, and a heavy weight was pressing on his stomach. More swamp gas rose. As the eyeball kept staring, the pressure rose to his chest, and he rose slowly, propelled by the gas. He floated to his hips, his arms came free, and he grinned hopefully.

Then another object rose in front of him, and he tried to hold it down in case it was something foul. He failed, and it continued to rise until ooze flowed off it, revealing it to be the dead little boy.

“Why can't you stay buried, you rotten kid!” he shouted, shaking the corpse violently. Then he saw the tree moving and knew the slide was loose again. The oak tree slipped over the wall, and the boy's corpse pressed against him as the slide sloped forward. Reg had the corpse by the shoulders, and it was jabbing at him with stiff limbs as he tried to shove it away. He continued struggling with it as the slide took him down the bluff wall and on down to the bottom of the lake.

Reg managed to hold his breath as he went under, and he saw air bubbles and the boy's corpse floating in the cloudy water above. He pumped his legs, trying to speed the melting of the mud at his feet, then waves of blindness hit him, and he was rising. His lungs were a balloon about to burst. He expected to see his life pass before him, but instead he saw that old self-image again, himself as a corpse. This time he was swollen and splitting to slime in the algae at the shore. And this time it was the kids who were alive, dancing and skipping on the rocks as they poked him with sticks of driftwood.

--the end--

Digging up the Past

By Gary Morton

The sunlight is golden, and it falls over the horizon like a slow meteor, sinking into some distant ocean. I never see the day. My sleep comes with the light. This book is always in my hands in the evenings when I wake. Bound in ancient leather, its pages are strengthened by the mould and yellowing of time, as if its leaves were becoming leathery parchment rather than dust.

The letters spill into my eyes. A spidery scrawl; they are the memory of all things. I remember nothing alone, and each night I begin again, recollecting pieces of my past. Fragments without cohesion that tumble into the abyss, so that I am never whole. Sometimes things are taken from me with such force that I see the fire of my mind as it crackles back into the book.

Stirrings of things undone, failure that I have forgotten; the shame of being human towers over my life, and I have lost the will needed to wash it away.

My finger touches the page, becomes a beckoning claw in the twilight. I see the torch and reddened eyes burning beneath the demon's hood.

It is back to the beginning this time, and I burst through a huge door, splintering the rotten wood, and I am standing there at the top of some basement stairs, my eyes adjusting to the gloom. Keen odors of decay fill my nostrils. Blue light gleams on the cylinder of the handgun I hold. Wisps of pale smoke drift from the barrel, and I know I have killed someone.

But who?

I see that I am an ordinary man: unshaven, my lean features tending toward the rugged and handsome. Hunger burns in my gray eyes, and I know I am a man driven mad. I have killed my child, and I see her face. An angel's face that I know hides unspeakable evil. She is gone, crushed by bullets from my gun. Gone in the shrieking of the tempest, her shattered skull crumbling in the caverns of the dead from which it came. Silence, oblivion, the grave has closed over her, and now she belongs to the withered claw and the hooded one who lurks in the darkness below.

Wicked phantasms gather, sirens of evil sing songs of darkness doubly terrible under the bleak sky. Cries growing funereal - death wails of an evil that waited for a thousand years, only to have been turned to dust and death by my gun.

The light flashes, crackles from the book to my hand, blackening it to a corpse's claw. I see my arm wither as the life is taken from it. Then I see her stirring, drinking my life into her moldered corpse.

Stumbling down those steep basement stairs, I fling myself about desperately in the gloom, looking for some kind of lamp. My eyes adjust, and sweat and dust pour on my face. I have found the shovel, but the earth is packed hard and too hard to dig. And that is not good because I want to bury her body deep. There is a large trunk in the corner beneath a waxy, cobwebby window. Perhaps the earth is softer beneath it. Rushing over, I pull it aside.

Now the book crackles, and the ceiling cracks, and looking up, I see moonlight, and suddenly I am in a grave, with earth being shoveled on top of me. Cold suffocation, and I am clothed in a torn dress.

A silent scream rises in my throat, and then I see myself digging in the soft earth that had been under the trunk. Digging down deep, until my hands are blistered and bleeding, and the shovel scrapes on stone.

The hammer comes down on the stake, and it sinks through my heart, its sickening crunch the sound of my death, and a flint struck to ignite a flame that will become eternal burning. I do not know where this image comes from or why it invades my space now; then my vision goes back to her, and I see myself dragging her limp body down the stairs to the grave I have dug.

Her face sinks forever beneath the earth, and when I am done, my tears are from both sorrow and exhaustion. Sorrow because she was my daughter, and my curse.

I am nearly blind with tears as I drag the trunk back over the grave, and when I finish, I collapse on it and sleep on it. Endless dark dreams and emptiness; I awake burning with pain, hunger, thirst, and sorrow. Without understanding why, I throw back the lock and open the trunk. And there is the book, and I know I will open it, and that it is her book. Then my eyes close.

The twilight is deep purple, and it falls on the horizon like a final curtain. I will never see the day. My sleep will be eternal this time. The ancient book is in my hands, and her angel face is a silhouette on the worn leather.

Mould and the yellowing of time have taken me, and my body is leather, parchment, rot, and dust. In the basement, she is rising, her hand pink with life stolen from me. Tiny fingers break the soil.

I have read the book, holding it with my hands of splintered bone, and it is her book. It tells a lonely story, and the ending leaves me forever forgotten. Yet she is remembered. And now I must sleep, knowing that it is the fang that lives on while the bones are buried.

--the end--

A Scanner Story

By Gary Morton

Blue beads rained down, blackening the tinted window as they enlarged to small tongues of flame. A smoking flare buzzed angrily as it curved and swept off in the heat haze. A confused fat man stepping from a player's booth met the tail end of the bolt and flailed desperately for a moment before spitting steaming red vomit and collapsing.

Danny ducked back into the dark enclosure and shivered as the last of the freezing vaporized. Scan sensors must've detected his presence. They were killing everyone in the area, mass extermination, just to get to him. He didn't know why. Not the whole story because too many memories were fading. He remembered enough to stay away from the booths and the fresh memories planted by the scan cops.

Electric pain shot random lines of static through his mind. His lips felt fat and numb. They moved silently as the last of the caked frost fell away. “I should be dead already.” The enemy had already got him down by the waterfront. He remembered fleeing and the steady pursuit of the mob – their plodding feet, tenacity, and fixed expressions. None of them had his athletic ability; he'd killed one man, cracking his skull with a heavy swing from a piece of broken paving stone. Then it'd been the scan cops, the howling metal-backed dogs, and the searching beams of robot fire. A drone had finally captured him, but it couldn't have been a scanning drone. It was a freezer beam that hit him, and now he was here recovering.

“Danny,” he mumbled; that was his name. He could barely remember it. There was nothing else. And that's what hurt most. There was nothing for him or anyone else in the world. You went into a player booth once a week for a new charge of identity and euphoric emotion. You went in every week without fail. You lived a life of security under the scan cops' watch.

Drool fell from his frozen lips, and an inner voice told him to get ready. A bitter knot of memories unraveled in the vagaries of his mind. He'd been a poet, a doctor, a soldier - many people and places, and he'd been nothing at all because none of it had been real but planted. It made for a perfect world where everyone fit flawlessly into the puzzle. The jigsaw spun into a hideous, melting chameleon, and then it was all colors running into mud. Only Danny was real - a simple mind, perfect only in its pain and emptiness.

They'd stolen his name; they'd given him other names. They'd stolen his life; they'd given him a personality drug. He heard their voices yelling "Halt!" and another voice yelling "Run!"

Throwing the chamber door open, he propelled himself forward. A smear of gleaming metal and blue uniforms moved outside the scorched glass, but he didn't stop to look. This was a huge room, with a vaulted ceiling and statues rising like ghosts everywhere. A beam ripped through the window, knocking marble to smoking dust at his heels. Then he found a pocket of darkness and a door.

On reflex, he put his index finger to the pad, but it wouldn't open. No door would open until his record as a player was again intact. The weak lock shattered under the force of his hard boot. Stepping through, he found himself in sunlight. He retreated from the blinding rays, and then he heard something heavy shatter behind him. He ran, his eyes adjusting as he moved. It was a long, sky-lit walkway stretching between two of the museum buildings. Fortunately, there weren't any guards. A silver flash from the drones below caught the corner of his eye, and he ran all the faster, hoping to make it before they could track him.

The inner voice said something inaudible, and his running seemed focused on some hot point, like a homing device had been planted in his forebrain. The glass imploded at his rear, and an explosion flew down the tube like a corpse bulge sliding down a snake's belly. The wind caught him first, blowing him straight through the door.

Danny tumbled across a polished stone floor. He managed to catch the side of a fluted column. He swung behind it.

A second shock wave funneled in from the walkway, and he clung to the pillar, seeing the blue of an approaching scan guard. Wind, glass, and metal ripped past him. The guard, who'd been raising his weapon, was hit by the blast, the force throwing him back as broken chunks of plastic and glass cut into his face. He went to the floor, dropping his gun. Blood poured on his visor; he was blinded and scrambling for a weapon he couldn't see. Danny didn't wait; he dived, got the gun, swung up, and pulled the trigger. And it didn't work.

Kicking the guard back, he tossed the gun and grabbed a shard of Plexiglas. Flinging himself around onto the guard's back, he pulled his arm back in a lock. In a second, he'd amputated a finger.

Hurrying back, he got the weapon. Turning, he put the amputated finger on the pad and aimed at the rising guard. A whirl of light emerged from the barrel, the kick sending him three steps back.

Fine gold wire spun at lightning speed and moved forward slowly; it hit the guard with a tornado of destruction, sending dismembered limbs tumbling on the floor. Metal plating spilled from the torn chest, and a complex panel of symbols popped from the forehead. He'd been a scan cop, not a human guard. It meant Danny had now killed one of the precious guardians of the biometric world.

The thought made him grin, and then he saw the light, heard the inner voice, and began to run. He was deep in the museum now, an abandoned portion with lighting as dim as phosphor. Distant rumbling and clatter told him he was well ahead of the scan cops. He halted at the side of an enormous silver tank, choking lightly on the thick, musty atmosphere. Before him were trunks and mounds covered in canvas. The light in his mind focused on one mound.

Yellow dust swirled up as he ripped back the covering. The object was a coffin; his dim mind remembered that much. An historical thing - there wasn't enough juice left in him to draw on the word sarcophagus.

The stranger's voice chattered like inner dialogue. People don't die anymore; there are no coffins when the world dies. They didn't want freedom; they became drones, seeking protection and security. This world is a prison, and prisons have masters. However, masters can die, too. The security of the womb is for society, a prison ....

Danny lifted the heavy lid, expecting to find a being, and instead he found nothing. Heavy dark cloth covered the bottom. He pulled it back and saw a tiny jar and a gleaming metal tube.

A small square of skin floated in yellow liquid in the jar. The voice told him he would need it. The tube was an ancient gun of some sort. Likely useless now.

He picked it up and studied it for a few seconds, then he heard the fast, heavy thump of approaching guard boots.

There was a disadvantage to having feet like stone. It meant that Danny was much faster. But then the only thing the scan guards really did was direct human traffic, ensuring that the perfect world was indeed perfect. Danny figured he was a sort of freak. One of the very few who'd lost the hunger for the player booths. He'd been late a couple of times and found that as soon as his scan wasn't renewed, the whole of society was programmed to make a capture and take him back to the nearest booth. This time, he'd really gone too far. His player personalities had faded; the scan cops wanted him dead at all costs. And if anything kept him going, it was wonder at this third party, the inner voice that kept him alive … that and the hateful knowledge that this raw and empty Danny was the real Danny who'd never been allowed to live. It was really a planet of ghosts - billions of people, all of them players - recordings doing the tasks and living the lives the safe scan world wanted them to live.

The voice or perhaps chip in his head had told him that. From one perspective, the safe world was the right thing, so as the heavy boots of the scan cops entered, he wondered why he knew they were wrong.

Events began to unfold in the way the voice had whispered - though Danny wasn't at the sarcophagus, the three scan cops went straight for it. One cop glanced inside, and the other two turned, their visors glowing blue as they scanned the darkness.

The ancient weapon didn't require fingerprints. It had a trigger, and Danny pulled it and staggered as it boomed and kicked. Some fire licked at the barrel - the blast was invisible, but the effect was not. The first scan cop lost an arm, and the second was thrown up over the sarcophagus by a force that ripped his chest wide open. A blue bolt sizzled past him from the third guard, so he fired again, the shot knocking the scan cop's head apart. Bone and pulp sprayed the wall, but the visor and the metal caging for the head remained. The cop went down, then got to his feet and staggered mindlessly about, burning walls as he fired wildly in all directions.

Danny was already across the hall, and as a bolt knocked the door down, he ran out. He heard the ceiling collapsing as he made his way to a hidden elevator in the dark. The door shut heavily, and it hummed audibly as it went down. Seconds later, the door opened, and he looked around warily as he stepped into a dimly lit, cobwebbed hall. He saw no one; the floors were coated with smooth dust. Obviously, the room hadn't been entered in a long time.

The voice in his head grew chaotic; tiered stone benches lined his right, so he sat and took out the jar. His head buzzed as he looked at the floating skin. Again, the voice came clear and answered the question in his mind. “I am not a chip in your head or anything the scan cops can find. I am a glitch in the system, a ghost of the machine, evolved from the players in the silitallica mind of this world. Now I am fading, and they will never know of me until the end. And you will bring the end by ....

Danny studied the severed finger and the square of skin in the jar; subterranean rumbling told him the scan cops were tracking him, blowing down doors underground. He decided to hurry and opened the jar. A deep, musty odor rose as he removed the skin. Lacking a knife, he smashed the jar and proceeded to cut the print off the severed scan guard finger he had, and then he pricked the end of his index finger. When it was bleeding lightly, he smoothed on the piece of skin and the other print. Fusion began immediately, and he bit his tongue and groaned as the severe pain of it caught him by surprise. It lasted about a minute, and when it was done, he had a normal finger, but he didn't have confidence that it would work. An inner voice told him the glitch had used an ancient technology that the scan cops could possibly detect. Shocks hit the room like an earthquake. He decided he had little to lose and ran for the elevator.

It rattled and banged unsteadily in the damaged shaft, but it made it back up. The door flew open unnaturally fast. Dust was about to smoke inside, and he found himself facing the raised weapons of two scan cops. Danny also had his gun raised and was about to squeeze the trigger when he saw the red light twinkle on their visors. Their shadowy expressions softened. They lowered their weapons. Whatever the voice had done, it had worked.

The scan cops were now his servants, and they flew him down to a beach he used to frequent in one of his better player personalities. He felt as empty and vast as the waters of the lake. The robot and human traffic, the numerous boats and planes, seemed engaged in pointless industry. None of it agreed with his mostly blank mind. He sent a stone skipping across sun-sparkling waves, then he strolled down to a player booth that stood conveniently between a hot dog stand and a public video connect enclosure.

His finger hit the pad; he put on the headset, and, as the glitch had promised, this time his mind was not overwritten by a player's personality. He became aware of one other control command in the booth … one that no one knew of anymore. He punched it out, tweaked a dial, and then he was online with the central player energy drives.

Instantly, he jerked free and threw down the headset. Danny's brain could handle the information flow, but his simple personality couldn't.

He shivered and stared through the smoked glass at happy parents frolicking with two robot kids and a metal-backed dog on the sand. They were stupid players, all of them. Even the human gay male pseudo-parents exhibited dumb, controlled behavior. The hybrid dog and mechanical children couldn’t hide their cheap programming.

Danny still had his gun, and he carried it openly as he strolled over the grass. He pondered the world, his life … and he was the only living person who could. Strange lust and a wish for revenge tapped his heart. And it was a feeling he could not expel, even though he knew revenge was impossible. The masters were dead - long ago; the last one had programmed his personality in as a player and then committed suicide.

They had been ideologues … true to their belief in a closed-system safe society. They had never allowed the existence of any masters capable of altering the perfect world, and they had uploaded their brain systems so that the world would never deviate from their plan. Only the scan cops were allowed – partially human robots that corrected any deviance.

And they had failed to understand that a completely closed system could not exist in nature. Change would come.

Bitterness swept in with the waves on the beach. Danny stopped, facing a huge uniformed scan cop. “I am going to kill you,” he said.

“Thank you very much,” said the pleasantly smiling cop. Then the blast hit his visor, ripping off his metal head as he was thrown back ten feet. The body rolled loosely; the head splashed out in the water. Danny sat and put down the gun. He considered the question. If he destroyed the player controls, billions of people would be left with empty minds. Freedom in a vacuum of mindlessness. They would remember a bit from the programming. Most would die. Some would scratch out a living somehow. It would be a cruel and hideous new world.

In the player booth, he had learned his number. With a tiny laser penlight, he burned it lightly on the back of his hand, and calmly thought of what he might do.

His number was player 666.

-- the end --

Night Angel Tales

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