Fantasy Girl

Kenneth James Crist

Jeremy rolled off his throttle and eyeballed the girl standing at the top of the onramp. The afternoon sun was behind her, making it difficult to see her clearly, but one thing was sure-she was young and she looked to be both slim and attractive.

She hasn’t been here very long, he thought, or some pervert would have already stopped. He applied some front wheel brake and rolled sedately to a stop, where she could look him over and decide for herself. She was miles from any town of any size in rural Arizona, which meant she was miles from help.

He was impressed when he got a good look at her. She appeared to be in her late twenties, about 5’ 7” tall and stacked. Her ash blonde hair fell almost to the middle of her back and her eyes seemed to be quite dark. She wore a sleeveless top, not quite a tank top, but close. It was glaringly white and made her smooth skin look very tanned. It missed covering her navel by three inches. Her jeans were fashionably raggedy, having both knees split and at least one strategic hole showing she either wasn’t wearing panties, or they were so skimpy as to be nearly non-existent. Her ensemble was finished off with a pair of old, comfortable-looking hiking boots of split calf hide. Beside her on the ground was a small, battered brown suitcase.

When she smiled, her teeth, like her shirt, were almost blindingly white in the heat of the sun. She stepped close to the bike on the throttle side and said, “Hi.” Her voice was low and breathy, quite sexy.

“You’ll fry your brains out here just standin’ around, girl,” Jeremy said, his own smile matching hers. He’d had this fantasy so many times, he had it rehearsed down pat.

“Where ya headed?” she asked, already picking up the suitcase.

“West,” he replied, “no real destination. Figured I’d turn around when I got to the ocean.” Sounds like a plan, he heard her say in his mind.

“Sounds like a plan. Where can I put this?” She held out the suitcase.

He shut off the motor and flipped out the kickstand, leaning the bike over, and he stepped off. He turned to the back and opened the trunk, taking out a spare helmet and taking the suitcase from her. It just fit the trunk, like it was made to go there. He handed her the helmet, and seeing her grimace of distaste, he said, “Yeah, I know. It’ll sweat ya and make your pretty hair a mess, but you won’t die.” Why, are we gonna have a wreck?

“Why, are we gonna have a wreck?” She asked.

“Not planning on it, but then wrecks aren’t usually planned ahead…”

He helped her fasten the helmet, his fingers coming momentarily into contact with the silky skin under her chin, then he straddled the machine again and stood it up, and reached back and flipped down the passenger pegs. She stepped up and over, mounting the back saddle like she’d been raised on a bike. Or maybe a horse…

“I was raised around horses, so this is pretty natural for me,” she said, “Hey, do you really think my hair’s pretty?”

“Haven’t seen anything you got that I wouldn’t consider pretty,” he said, and hit the starter. The bike rumbled to life and he signaled to pull out. Her arms slid around his waist in a most comfortable way and her chin was on his shoulder as she said, “Thanks, guy. My name’s Clarice and you can keep those nice things comin’ my way. I love ‘em.”

“Well, Clarice, I’m Jeremy and you smell really nice, too. Especially considering you’ve been out in hundred-degree heat. Are you hungry?” I could eat a bear…

“I could just about eat a bear, or anything else that doesn’t eat me first.”

Jeremy resisted the urge to tell her just how badly he wanted to eat her. With luck, that would come later…

Evening found the bike headed into Kingman and they decided to grab some dinner. A Denny’s seemed safe enough and they pulled in, parking three spaces from the door. He let her dismount, then he went through the kickstand routine and stepped off. As he turned, he caught his reflection in the big plate glass windows on the front of the restaurant. He was not a large guy, maybe an inch taller than the girl, but he was tanned and fit, quite muscular in fact. His T-shirt hid most of his tattoos, but some ink showed below the sleeves. His jaw was square and he sported a big, dark Tom Selleck mustache.

His gaze traveled to her reflection and he stopped, frozen momentarily, then his head snapped around to look at her. She was just turning toward him, having just pulled off the helmet, and she was shaking out her hair. He turned and looked at her reflection again, but whatever he thought he had seen, it was gone. For a moment there, she had just looked…well… wrong somehow, almost hunchbacked…her shape distorted…maybe by a flaw in the glass…maybe by heat waves off the pavement. It was really strange…for a moment there she hadn’t looked human at all…

They almost had their first fight over the dinner check. She had reached and grabbed it before he even got a look at it and she would not relinquish it, no matter what he said or did. Just as it was about to get really heated, she said, “Look. You’re providing the transportation, the least I can do is buy a meal. Later on, if you’re good, maybe I’ll let you pay for the room.” She had smiled at him brightly and his resistance had dissolved.

Room. She said “Room.” Singular. Not “rooms” plural. So, was she already planning on staying with him tonight? In the same room? The fantasy, he realized was continuing unabated.

“C’mon,” she said, standing up and dropping a couple singles on the table, “I need a shower and some air conditioning.” He watched her tight little fanny twitch back and forth as she headed for the register. He wanted that butt in his hands so bad it made him ache…

She picked a motel that could have been called a couple notches below reasonable. It had a door that locked, clean, if somewhat threadbare sheets on a too-soft bed and the most horrible décor of about any room Jeremy had ever occupied. The carpet was a shade of green that resembled bile and was none too clean. The air conditioning was ice cold, however. She seemed entirely happy with it, and it was only $32.00 a night, double.

As soon as they got in the room, she grabbed clean underclothes from her little overnight case and headed into the bathroom. Jeremy unloaded the bike, cleaned the windshield and lights, checked everything and covered it for the night. When he got back inside, she was just stepping out of the bathroom, a big white towel wrapped around her body and a smaller one around her hair.

“It’s all yours,” she said.

When he merely stared at her stupidly, she slowly adjusted the towel to cover the half of a nipple that had been showing and said, “The bathroom, Big Fella. It’s all yours.”

Tearing his gaze away from her, he gathered up some clothes and went to shower. He shaved more carefully than he had in a long time and brushed his teeth and when he came out, she appeared to be asleep, right smack in the middle of the bed. The towels were on the floor in a damp heap.

He sat gently down on the foot of the bed and grabbed the remote for the TV, turning the volume down some, so as not to wake her. In a moment, though, something touched him at his waist and when he looked around, a long, silky leg was extending out from under the covers and she was trying to pinch him with her toes. He grabbed the offending foot and began to massage it, a trick he’d used many times before to loosen up nervous or reluctant women. She seemed to be neither. In moments she was out from under the covers, naked as a Robin’s egg and kneeling behind him, kissing the side of his neck as her cool hands slid across and down his chest.

“What’s all this?” she asked, her fingers tracing the inkwork on his back, shoulders and arms.

“What, my tattoos? Well, the dragons I got when I was pretty young and in the military…” He went on to tell her about each of the pieces of personal body art. She seemed fascinated at first, but then quickly lost interest and turned her attentions elsewhere.

Her hands sought and found the button on his jeans and then the zipper. In the twinkling of an eye he was being gripped in a most friendly manner.

“Hey Lady, what’cha doin’ there?”

“Jus’ checkin’ you out, Big Boy. Makin’ sure you got what it takes.”

“So, whattaya think? Do I?”

“Oh, yeah,” she breathed in his ear, her hand stroking the length of his hardened manhood, “I believe you most certainly do…”

At that point he stood and removed what clothing he still wore, and before he could even make it back onto the bed, she gripped him again and then, on her hands and knees, and with him standing at the foot of the bed, she took him into her mouth.

It had been quite a while since he’d been with a woman, and he’d never really been with one as gorgeous as Clarice. She worked him for about a minute with his hands holding her lovely, firm breasts before he came explosively in her mouth, at which point she merely swallowed, then, before he could soften, she rolled on her back and pulled him aboard. As he sank himself into her slickness, he marveled at his great good fortune on finding this gorgeous creature. Then he was soon lost in the adventure of her body as she achieved orgasm again and again, her cries of delight spurring him on to efforts he never knew he could muster. At one in the morning the count was nine for her, four for him, and they slept at last, tangled in each other’s limbs.

He awoke again at a quarter to five, and she was gone. Or, more correctly, she was not in the bed with him. He got up to pee and then to go look for her and found she was in the shower. The opaque curtain separated them as he relieved himself and he could hear the roar and spatter of the hot water and he could smell the odor of soapy woman. He was surprised that even after all the carnal activity just a short while ago, it still excited him.

There was also another smell, too, though, something richer and…perhaps guttier would be the correct word. It took him a few moments to recognize the odor of freshly spilled blood. What the hell…did she start her period…that smells like a lot of blood…but no, menstrual blood doesn’t smell like this…

With a trembling hand, he reached out and slowly pulled the shower curtain aside. Her back was toward him and he stopped, swallowing rapidly as he witnessed what could only be the aftermath of a screaming, horrible death being methodically washed off her body and down the drain. He glanced quickly around…with that much blood, her clothes must be a mess…but her bra, panties, jeans and top were all piled in the corner opposite the shower and appeared pristine. Well, soiled with sweat maybe, but not bloody, anyway.

As the last of the blood and something else…was that flecks of tissue…brains maybe? sluiced down the drain, she evidently felt the cooler air on her back and turned to him, reaching almost blindly, her eyes half-lidded in the hot mist. She pulled him into the shower with his underwear still on, kissing him deeply and forcing a state of arousal he would not have believed possible just yesterday. Moments later, his shorts were gone and he held her pinned against the wall in the corner of the shower stall and he was deep within her, his hands cupping her tiny ass, her slim legs wrapped around him and her breathing harsh against the side of his neck as he once again drove her to repeated climax. The slaughterhouse appearance of her shower was forgotten as he lost himself in the textures and scents of her body.

They opted for breakfast at the small restaurant across the street from the motel. They were both famished, having used a lot of energy the night before. She had produced a clean change of clothing from her bag and she looked pretty as a daisy in the morning sun as it came bounding through the easterly windows and onto their booth.

Outside, a siren sounded and then another and soon a rescue squad and ambulance went by, heading south. As the sirens were fading in the distance, they abruptly cut off.

“Must be something pretty close by,” he said, “a wreck or something.” His mind flashed to the blood, and what was that, brains? circling the shower drain.

“I’m gonna have the blueberry pancakes and a side of sausage, how about you?” she replied.

He picked up his menu and tried to focus on food, rather than blood.

After the waitress had taken their orders and refilled their coffee, he looked across the table and into her eyes. Had her left eye always been set slightly lower than her right? He looked quickly away as he began to see curiosity forming on her face and when he glanced back moments later, her face was perfect, the eyes symmetrical in all aspects, her generous mouth a beauty all by itself, the lower lip thick and so…kissable that even now he wanted to reach across and grab the back of her neck and pull her to him…

“Kiss me,” she said, “right here-right now…”

He reached and did exactly what he’d been thinking, feeling the slight dampness at the base of her scalp and tasting her toothpaste from just a while ago…right after the blood. Where did the blood come from? What did she do? Does she go out in the dark, naked, and kill for sport?

“Here comes our food,” she said, smiling in anticipation.

For some reason, Jeremy seemed to have mostly lost his appetite.

Needles, California was a hot sumbitch. She pronounced it to be so, and he agreed readily. It was lunchtime and he was wishing it were later in the day.

Why? asked the little voice in his head, so you can get back to fucking this little gal’s brains out? What about the brains going down the old shower drain? Do you suppose she got all bloody just by going out for a walk? Hah! Don’t think so, Big Boy…

Oh, stop it! For Chrissakes, she’s no murderer. Look at her! She’s gorgeous!

Clarice was walking toward the front doors of yet another restaurant, her tight little fanny doing that twitchy little roll and her silky hair, freed from its helmet, almost floating around her shoulders…those smooth, tanned shoulders…

Yeah, how long until she wants you to go help her kill somebody, pal? How long until you get to see what she does firsthand?

Jeremy had never been in prison. In fact, he had retired early from a law enforcement career. Had she known that, maybe she wouldn’t have been so quick to ride with him…or on him, either. Maybe if she’d known that, it would have been his blood…his brains going down the old drain that morning. He thought about the .40 caliber Glock pistol stashed away in his luggage and also wondered how he could get his hands on a Kingman Arizona paper. It would be nice to know for sure what had happened back there, with all the sirens and such.

At what point he decided to go to Vegas, he could never really say, but he’d made that run from Needles to Vegas before and he knew it was, again, a hot sumbitch. Before leaving, they stocked up on water and Gatorade. She was happy as a kid with a new toy at the prospect of seeing and actually being in Las Vegas, and Jeremy decided that was a good thing. Anything to keep her distracted and entertained until he could lose her somewhere. That blood and other gunk hadn’t been his imagination. And now he was beginning to think maybe what he’d seen in the glass windows at that first restaurant, that inhuman reflection of misshapen oddity might not have been imagination, either.

Could someone so lovely really be a monster? Not just in the sense that she could commit murder, slaughter someone, then, a short time later be fucking his brains out in the shower, but in the sense that she might actually be something totally lacking in humanity and able to somehow cloud his mind…and the minds of anyone else? Could she be alien? Not even native to this planet? From another world or dimension?

When they first met, when his fantasy script had been running in his mind, she had picked up on that and played her role flawlessly, to the point where it was scary. If she was able to read his thoughts, he reflected, he was already screwed. She’d know what he was going to do as soon as he conceived it. That might already be the case and she was just playing along, waiting for a good opportunity to kill him and dump his body somewhere.

He’d never asked her how she came to be out there at a crossroads in the middle of Arizona. Not asking any questions and just going with the flow had seemed like a good thing that first evening. High adventure and all that. Fulfilling that ol’ fantasy. Most likely, she wouldn’t have been inclined to tell him the truth, anyway. Was there a car back there somewhere with a body in it, perhaps another male she’d used up and maybe attacked, maybe even half-devoured? His mind occupied itself for a little while with everything he’d ever heard and read about vampires and shape changers. In spite of the heat, a cold chill slid up his back and prickled the back of his neck. As it arrived there, Clarice slowly licked the back of his neck and he nearly pissed himself. “Damn, you taste good with salt, Lover,” she said.

Nervously, he reached out and turned on the stereo and began thumbing the “seek” switch on the left handlebar until a station came in clearly…

“Authorities in Kingman Arizona are continuing their investigation at this hour into the death of a young hitchhiker. WKLT’s Mona Berry joins us from Kingman with the story. Mona?”

“Yes, Charles. In Kingman this morning it was a grisly scene as police discovered the mutilated body of a young hitchhiker on the city’s south side. Police are speculating that the man, whom they have declined to identify pending notification of family, may have been attacked by a mountain lion or other large predator. We have heard from sources close to the investigation that the young man was brutally killed and possibly partially consumed by the animal. We’ll have more whenever additional details are available. From WKLT First Line News, I’m Mona Berry. Back to you, Charles…

Holy shit! Jeremy quickly thumbed the “seek” button and moved on across the dial, finding some classical music, to which Clarice said, “Yuck!”, then a good oldies hard rock station. The song playing was the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for The Devil, and Clarice said, “There ya go! I like it!”

Jesus! That would have to be the fucking song…Oh My God…a hitchhiker killed and half eaten…on the south side of Kingman…the squad and ambulance were headed south…and she just sat there scarfing down pancakes…Jeremy’s thoughts tumbled through his mind like kids coming downstairs on Christmas morning to see what Santa brought. He made a conscious effort to get a grip and slow down his breathing. To just calm the fuck down now, and analyze what he’d gotten himself into.

There were definitely two realities working here at the same time.

There was the reality of the monster (face it, idiot, that’s what it was) in the window at Denny’s. And it’s sitting behind me right now, singing along with Mick fucking Jagger. Oh, God, gimme a break.

Along with that was the reality of the blood and brains circling the old drain as she hosed off that scrumptious bod. If she’s a monster, then you’ve been dipping your wick in something unearthly, you silly piece of shit…

There was also the reality of her. If he’d had to conjure up a perfect doll to find out on the highway, he was confident his fertile imagination would have come up with someone exactly like her. The ash blonde hair, the dark eyes, the build, the attitude, the sex-starved kitten was everything he had ever dreamed about and then some…

And that was when it clicked for Jeremy. When the key finally turned in the lock. When the other shoe dropped. When the fucked up dim light of his perception finally brightened to full wattage. Every cliché he’d ever heard to describe the point where the poor dumb sap of a horse’s ass finally gets it, ran through his mind like that other cliché about your life passing before you just at the moment when you face death.

His mind was so preoccupied that he never saw the dumbass Armadillo until the front wheel of the bike hit it and they were suddenly, abruptly, heart-stoppingly sailing through the air with the greatest of ease... The helmet didn’t do a goddamned thing but make a loud popping noise when it hit the roadway.

The driver lifted off his accelerator and downshifted the Mayflower van, eyeing the pretty redhead standing along the roadway. He rolled quietly to a stop, the brakes making a final hiss and waited to see if she’d climb up or shine him on. This was a long damn ways from anywhere…miles from Vegas and miles from Needles. What’s a little doll like her doing out here in the middle of nowhere?

The cab door opened and she tossed in a small, battered brown suitcase and then she climbed up. Well, son-of-a-bitch, he thought, this was against all company rules and common sense. But then he got a good look at her and made a decision in a heartbeat. If he got in trouble, so be it. He’d always had a thing for redheads and it appeared that all his fantasies were just about to come true…

No Such Things

Kenneth James Crist

Moonlight oozed down the adobe walls and seemed to drip like candle wax onto the terrazzo stones of the patio. The hushed desert wind briefly rattled the fronds of Tamarisk trees, then held its breath again.

The desert was waiting, its nightlife collectively pausing, and for what I did not know.

Overhead, a million indifferent stars gazed down, pinpoints of sparkling light, curving backward into eternity.

I stood, looking out from darkness into the silvery, slow night, a small revolver tucked into the back of my pants, just above where a drop of sweat eased down the crack of my ass like a pickpocket working a mark.

Behind me, the Casa was silent, its occupants now among the dead, but not the quick. The copper smell of much spilled blood permeated the air, along with the stench of fecal matter. At least one of the people inside had not died easily.

It would be a few more minutes before the Federales arrived, I knew, then all hell would break loose. The crime scene would be tromped through by every tin-pot cop in the district until all evidence was compromised, fingers and accusations would be pointed, but nothing would ever come of all the bullshit and hullabaloo.

Whatever had done for these people, I was confident it was now gone. I stepped back inside and lit up some lights and got to work.

In a few moments, I was sure I would find nothing new here except new grief. These were the same as all the others, nine cases now. Nine houses full of dead people. Throats torn out, blood smeared on floors and walls, entrails strung in almost decorative fashion over furniture, and some of the bodies partially eaten.

In spite of the fact that there was not one bullet hole or stab wound, this, like the others, would most likely be blamed on one drug cartel or another, labeled a revenge killing or territorial dispute and eventually swept under the carpet.

The rumors among the people were of a more superstitious nature. The term chupacabra was being heard with increasing frequency. The goat sucker. A legend of old Mexico that simply would not go away. I had become interested at one point and had read up on what I was now convinced was a totally mythical beast.

I had seen good drawings and bad, fuzzy photographs, read stories until I finally just got tired of the whole thing and set it aside. But the problem of the deaths persisted. Whatever or whoever did this was definitely a monster.

I had been hired by some of the elders of the districts involved and I was being paid from private funds, old money that still talked. So far, their money had not been well spent.

I stole quietly back out into the dark night, being careful where I stepped. Sirens were coming in the distance and there was no point in giving them footprints to follow around in circles until they walked up their own asses and disappeared.

My Corvette was parked two blocks over and I hurriedly cut through the yards to reach it. When I opened the door, I stopped and my heart downshifted, accelerated to its fight or flight posture. The interior of my car was torn apart, foam rubber hanging out, the leather of the seats and dash in tatters. And there were blood smears. I didn’t need a lab to tell me the blood would match some of the victims back in the casa. Suddenly, the search had become personal. Whatever, or whomever was murdering Mexico’s citizens knew I was after it and it was not happy.

I was able to drive the car away, although sitting in the interior, smelling the blood and seeing the carnage around me made it uncomfortable. At my home, I have a fairly good lab set up in one bay of my garage. Dawn was breaking by the time I’d swabbed blood from the remains of my upholstery and determined that it was indeed human. I’d also swabbed saliva and determined that it was not. Some animal, then. But what animal that knows its hunter so well, and is not intimidated?

I had heard all the tales of intelligent and aggressive animals. The wolverine of the north that would wait in trees to drop on unwary hunters, the snakes that would aggressively pursue, the tiger that would willingly stalk a man. The hunt took on a more sinister turn.

There is no shortage of upholstery shops in Mexico. The stories there are manifold, too, of gringos bringing their cars to have them “tuck and rolled”, only to find later that Jose or Manuel had stuffed their seats with straw. I knew a good honest shop, though, and I called them early to get the ‘Vette picked up and repaired. I would make sure it went on the expense account.

Next, I saw to my weaponry. A prized and highly illegal M-16 was brought from the gun safe, along with a Glock  9 mm semi-auto. Ammo for both, then almost as an afterthought, an even more illegal M-79 grenade launcher. I only had six rounds for that item, four high explosive and two white phosphorous. All this went into my other vehicle, an army surplus Humvee. I added some MRE’s and water, a couple blankets, and a night vision scope. Then I went to bed, setting my alarm for 6 PM.

That evening, darkness found me parked on a bluff overlooking the town. The desert cools rapidly at night and I was wrapped in an old Army blanket and seated on the hood of the Hummer, using the night vision scope to periodically sweep the town and the area around it.

I never heard the approach of the enemy. I smelled him. Even though the wind was so light as to be almost nonexistent, a faint breeze saved my life. When I realized I was being stalked, it was almost too late. From the darkness it came, all in a rush to tear me apart, to taste my blood and entrails. I rolled off the hood, dropping to my hands and knees as the thing sailed over me. I drew the 9 mm and fired, taking no time to aim, but shooting purely on instinct and reflex.

The screeching of the thing was unearthly and I was sure many of the towns- people were crossing themselves and giving Hail Marys, as it loped away into the darkness. I hurriedly grabbed up the night vision scope from where it had fallen, but it was broken. It had probably hit the bumper when I rolled off the Humvee.

So it was to be a dark pursuit, into inhospitable territory, against an unknown animal or being. Not good. What if it was not alone? Nature dictates that all things must reproduce, and all higher life forms have mates. Only the very low creatures bud or clone or divide to reproduce. So at the very least, I should count on two of whatever this was.

Common sense would insist I wait for daylight. But if I did that, others might die and there had been enough of that already. I set off, carrying the rifle, the pistol tucked into my belt and a powerful flashlight providing illumination.

The first thing I noticed was that its blood glowed. It was not red, either. It was a yellowish iridescent color in the light and it appeared the thing was bleeding quite freely. Maybe the hunt would be over soon. It wove a zigzag track through the cactus and scrub, as if disoriented or in shock. Its tracks were the size of human footprints, but there the similarity ended. Most of the tracks were indistinct, but those that had some detail suggested three toes with claws. I knew of no creature with three toes, except the sloth.

It was headed up into the hills and making good time in spite of being injured. As I progressed, from time to time I would notice that odor again, almost a skunk musk, but somehow sweeter and perhaps slightly rancid. I really doubted that a good tracking dog would follow that smell. They’d be too smart.

The pursuit continued for hours and it began to wear on my nerves. I pictured myself countless times being jumped from the darkness and not being aware that I was dying until my throat was ripped out, my blood gushing to soak into the stony desert ground. Then the blood began to disappear. It was either bleeding out or it was healing itself, or it had found a way to staunch the blood flow. Now it was only tracks that I must follow. I became more cautious, and so it gained the necessary lead it needed to escape.

When I heard the electric whine of a motor of some kind, I looked up to the summit of the highest hill for miles around. I was a hundred yards distant when I saw the crack of light and realized it was coming from the inside of a house or vehicle. Then I saw the full opening and the ramp extending down. The flattened ovoid shape and the silhouette of the creature as it staggered up into the ship.

I was having my own close encounter, but this was no friendly E.T. No off-world horticulturist collecting specimens here. This was a vicious monster from the stars, who liked to hunt and kill the innocent. As the ramp began to rise and retract into the ship, I sprinted for it and at the last instant I cast the rifle aside and leapt, grabbing the edge of the ramp and hauling myself upward and over the lip. I rolled down into mellow warmth and pale light, silvery walls and floors and an interior that somehow seemed larger than the exterior. And the smell. In here, it was an incredible, choking, nauseating stench, almost a physical blow.

I heard the pneumatic hiss as the hatch dogged itself shut and I felt the craft lift off, though it seemed to make no noise. I gathered myself up and pulled the pistol from my belt, moving stealthily around, trying to get my bearings. On the walls, strange hieroglyphs were painted or marked in rows that went up and down. Nothing familiar in any of them. Probably signs and technical markings, I reasoned.

I traversed the entire deck without finding any sign of my adversary, so I began looking for ways to go up or down. In the center of the craft there was a round or tubular vertical shaft, which contained nothing more complicated than an elevator. There was a red plate and a green beside the outline of a door. I chose the red and placed my hand on it. The door slid open from my right to my left. The interior was empty.

I stepped in and waited. Just as I was about to step back out or start looking for controls, it took off, hauling me upward. In five seconds, it stopped and the door slid open, revealing the control room. Directly in front of me the creature sat in a chair-like device that was fastened to the deck. His back was toward me, but he knew I was there. His attention was riveted on his controls and he would not even deign to acknowledge my presence until he was ready. I steadied my aim and waited, casting nervous glances around and behind me. I wondered where the mate was, or the rest of the crew.

Soon, the creature turned its head and hissed at me as it rose from the chair and to its full height. It was about six feet and stocky and it had two arms and two legs. It could almost be mistaken for something human in poor lighting. Its hands and feet were grotesque, having pads and claws that looked like they were designed to carry it quickly over rocky and inhospitable terrain. Its eyes were wide-set and large, yellowish and set with cat-like pupils of elliptical shape. But the mouth…that was the worst part. Teeming with teeth, it appeared it would be near impossible to close. It reminded me of the mouths of some deep-sea specimens of fish, things that lived in eternal darkness and knew only hunger and cold.

I shot it before it could get anywhere near me and before it could bring out any kind of weapon. To my surprise the three shots I fired, two to the chest and a head-shot, had the immediate and desired effect: I blew it away.

I stood there looking at it, expecting it to dissolve into some nasty puddle of slime or cloud of noxious gas like in some scifi movie, but it did nothing but continue to be dead. Then I looked back up at the control area and saw something both interesting and frightening on the large view screen. We were approaching another ship, and it was huge.

I moved quickly to the control panel, expecting that, in a culture this evidently advanced, the controls might be “so simple a child could operate them.” No dice. This fucker was way complicated and, not only was I short on knowledge, I was running out of time. It appeared we would just cheerfully sail right into the side of what I was already thinking of as the Mothership, my own mind having been conditioned by Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica as much as the next guy’s.

Then, we began to slow, and I observed that a portal was opening to receive the smaller ship. Great. In moments, I would be surrounded by many more vicious things like my dead friend on the deck. I checked my ammo supply. I had but one weapon, the Glock 9 MM pistol and a total of eighteen rounds. The rifle was back down on the lower level. They would be able to get to it before I could. So, with careful target selection and good shot placement, I might take another ten or fifteen with me. Okay, so be it. If necessary, I would trade my life for as many of theirs as I could nail. I might not ever collect my pay, but if I died, it didn’t matter, My Humvee would be found and the tracks followed up into the hills. I might someday become a legend and many Novenas said to speed me through Purgatory and into heaven.

There was a bump and another of those hissing, compressed-air sounds and a final lurch. On the deck below, I could hear the electric whine as the hatch began to open. We had arrived. 

I stepped over my dead acquaintance and into the elevator and started down. And just before the door opened, I heard shouting—human voices and English. As the door opened fully, I think they were as shocked as I was. I stood with a loaded pistol hanging in my hand at my side and my jaw hanging just as slackly.

There was a mixed group of at least seven species, all jabbering at once. There were some like my dead adversary upstairs, and others so unlike him that no sane comparison could be made. But odd as it seems in retrospect, the ones that drew my attention the most quickly and firmly were the ones in U. S. Air Force dress blue uniforms. Before I could react, several M-16’s were trained on me and an MP yelled “Freeze!” From the corner of my eye, I observed at least one small creature squeaking and jetting off into darkness to hide before the shooting began.

“Put down the weapon, Sir!”

Well, at least he was polite enough or well-trained enough to call me “sir”, but there was still no doubt that he would kill me if I didn’t comply. Clearly outgunned and almost terminally confused, I did what any sane man with a normal amount of curiosity would do. I dropped the friggin’ gun. I was quickly grabbed and taken into custody and escorted off the smaller ship.

They hauled me along corridors and up and down passageways and elevators until I was so lost I could have never found my own way out. I had been on aircraft carriers at sea and this thing could have swallowed a half-dozen. How something like this could be in orbit around our planet without our government knowing about it…but then, they did know, didn’t they? They had personnel on board…

I fully expected to land in some kind of brig or holding cell, but at last, I was ushered into an outer office and told by my MP escort, “Sit. Stay. General’s gonna be pissed if you try and leave…hell, he’s already pissed…”

I sat. I stayed. Damn sure didn’t want the General any more pissed than he was. Besides, there was that old curiosity again. As I waited, I listened to the hum of the lights, the clicking of computer keys and conversations in many languages going on all around me. Several times, improbable creatures passed through the outer office and paid me little mind. I tried not to freak when something that looked like a coffee-table sized sow beetle lumbered through, with a Nokia cell phone strapped to one of its several hundred legs.

Finally, after what seemed in some ways a very long time and in other ways but mere seconds, the door to the inner office opened and there stood the General.

I had expected George C. Scott’s General Patton or Buck Turgidson from Dr. Strangelove, or at least Sterling Hayden’s rendition of Brig. General Jack D. Ripper. This guy motioned me into his office and quietly closed his door, effectively sealing out the office noise I had gotten used to. He looked more like Alan Alda from M*A*S*H* and sounded, when he spoke like Father Mulcahey.

He sat at his desk and opened a file, read from it briefly, then said, “What kind of a name is Jesse Battlebow?”

“Um…it’s my name, Sir.”

“I am aware that it’s your name, but what kind of name is it?”

I cleared my throat and shifted slightly in my seat. “It’s mostly Kiowa, they tell me, Sir, and some Comanche…”

“Um-hmmm…and tell me, Mr. Jesse Battlebow, how does a half-assed, half-breed sort of Native American, part-time bounty hunter, part-time mercenary dick-wad like you wind up killing one of our allies on a highly classified Alternative Space Craft with a common nine millimeter pistol?”

He remained silent, staring at me over his little half-lensed reading glasses. Guy was starting to piss me off. So I told him.

To say that the General and I didn’t get along well from that point on would be an understatement. But, I’ll give him credit, he listened to me rant and rave about murder in the night and blood and bodies and superstition. And when I had finally run down and he was sure I was finished, he smiled at me and told me something he shouldn’t have.

He said that on planet Earth, the human race had become our greatest resource and at the same time, a burgeoning pestilence. He said that on a planet where there were fewer than a thousand Grizzly Bears, it was an embarrassment to sport a human population of over eight billion. He told me that in the early 1950’s several of the soon-to-be super powers were contacted by off-planet governments and a deal was struck. In exchange for an introduction to their technologies, things that would lead us eventually to the stars, we would allow a few hundred thousand human sacrifices a year. Earth had become a huge hunting reserve and the prey was mankind.

No large or noticeable “harvests” were to be allowed, but trophy-taking was not only allowed but was encouraged. This outlet for aggression in some of their more warlike species had already diffused some conflicts and, at least for them, it was working nicely.

Then he sent me down to have my memory erased. No little flashy thing, like in Men In Black. This was the real deal. As they were walking me down, I figured I was going to die, or be dumped somewhere in the middle of a desert with no memories at all and I’d die anyway. In my vest pocket, I had one old Peyote button, a dried-up, almost obscene-looking thing I’d carried for years. When I came of age, my uncle took me to his sweat lodge and we sang and smoked and he gave me Peyote so I could have a vision. In my particular vision, I wandered alone in the desert and I was visited by many familiar creatures and many that were strange, but each brought a bit of his own wisdom. The Owl taught me silence, the Wolf tact, the Bear patience and on and on…as we approached the room where they would do the procedure, they never saw me slip the Peyote in my mouth.

As they hit me with the juice, my first convulsive swallow sent the old magic cactus button down my gullet and it never dawned on them that the nausea I experienced was from anything but their machines.

I was right about them dumping me in the desert. And I was so glad. You see, I grew up there and it holds no fears for me. Nowadays, I stick to bounty hunting and I keep a low profile. I have mostly gone back to my roots, back to the ways of my people. I know they have the capability of checking on me any time they want. The Peyote saved me from losing my memories, and that is my cross to bear. Knowing what I know and doing what I do, I must pay attention every minute. And you know what? I no longer get involved in investigating murder…not for any price.

At The Zombie Five-and-Dime

Kenneth James Crist

Looking out from the open door of the hayloft, I watch over the town. Moonlight silvers every shiny surface, the water in the fountain in the town square shimmers, a pallid reflection of that lucent orb, making my eyes heavier with every measured beat of my heart.

I can feel my pulse in my wrists and in my neck, behind my eyes and, when I think about Robyn, in other places, too. It is so damned hot out, even hours after sundown, and I long for air conditioning and a cold, long-necked Bud.

Not that I was ever much of a beer drinker, but lately the thought of a cold, brown bottle, its sides dripping with moisture, is one of the things that almost drives me mad… thinking about Robyn is the other.

Now I sit, every night without fail, sweat running from under my arms and down the crack of my ass, watching and listening to the stillness. I know they’re out there, and I know they’re coming. It’s not a matter of if they come, it’s a matter of when they come.

And, even though I don’t feel I really have all that much to live for now, I won’t go easily when they finally show up again. They’ve been here before, some familiar and some not, but it doesn’t really matter if you recognize a relative or an old friend here and there. You still do what must be done…or you die. And if it were only dying, that wouldn’t be so bad. But there’s that other thing…

Robyn and me, we really had it made. We had food, we had shelter and we had weapons and all the ammo we needed. We coulda held out just about forever. And she could really shoot, too. When we ran into some of those things out there, she got just as many head shots as I did.

‘Course we tried never to meet up with ‘em, if we could help it. ‘Cause it was really some bad shit to have to shoot your uncle Jim or Aunt Emma, ‘cause they were no longer with it. No longer human, really, is what I mean to say.

It was kinda funny how I met up with Robyn. Each of us, at the same time, thinkin’ he was the only normal person left. And when we did happen to run across each other one day in the town’s only variety store, we damn near shot each other before we realized we were both okay. Simpson’s Five-and-Dime, that was. But then, when ya think about it, if we’d been undead, we wouldn’t have been lookin’ for candy and cigarettes…

Anyway, we hooked up that day and we been together ever since. But now…now I don’t know what I’m gonna do.

It was a long time after the shit started before we began hearing what actually caused it. We heard stuff about nuclear fallout, but I wasn’t buyin’ that, ‘cause if it was nuclear shit, nobody would be immune. And Robyn and me, we never showed any signs of bein’ sick at all. And besides, if it had been bombs, wouldn’t we have heard explosions, or seen mushroom clouds?

Then we heard it was some germ warfare stuff the towelheads used and that sounded more likely. All they’d have to do was get it into the air or the water supply somehow. Not too tough to do, when ya think about it. ‘Specially since there were so many of ‘em already over here.

But I bet when they were makin’ that shit, whoever really did mutate the virus or mix the chemicals or whatever, they never figured out that a certain percentage of people who died from it would come back.

We heard most of this stuff on an old ham radio receiver Robyn’s dad had played with before things went to hell. So we knew there were still a few normal folks out there. But we didn’t have no transmitter, so we couldn’t find out where they were. Robyn said on the two-meter band, the radio could skip all the way around the world. That was how we knew it wasn’t just Alabama that was fucked…

There were so many corpses when it got really bad, that there was no way they could all get buried. There simply weren’t enough survivors left to put them all in the ground and not enough hours in the day. Most of those unburied simply rotted away and eventually the incredible stench started going away, or at least lessening, until it was just a lingering, sour smell underlying everything else. You got bougainvillea and sour body stench, or chocolate brownies and rotten meat. Sometimes your own armpits reminded you of that other smell and at the same time, that you were still alive.

Within about a week after the end, when it seemed that 99.9% of the world’s humans and cats (did I mention the cats?) had died, some of the dead began to walk around again. A curious thing, there, or as Robyn called it, a phenomenon. At first, that was all they did. Just walked around and looked somehow stupid and at the same time pathetic. Creatures to be pitied, not really alive so much as reanimated by the very disease or chemical cocktail that originally killed them. But within a couple of days, just as I was getting used to seeing them shuffling around at all hours of the day and night, they began to get hungry. And that was when they turned vicious.

They seem to have a bloodlust, or maybe it’s a life-lust, that’s just an incredible thing to see. If they can get a live person trapped inside a building, they’ll sometimes wait for days or even weeks for that person to give up and come out, or to die and join them. If they catch you out in the open, unarmed and unable to outrun them, you’re history. They never use weapons of any sort, other than their own teeth and hands. They seem to have lost the capacity to use weapons or even tools, for that matter.

I have seen what happens once they catch a person and set upon him. I have seen several of them devour a freshly killed human, then become sated and drop into a stupor, sometimes for many hours. One thing about that soporific state of theirs: it makes them easy to re-kill. That’s what it really is, a repeat process that finally ends their reanimation. The only thing I’ve found that works is a head-shot with a fairly powerful firearm, something with enough wallop to literally scatter their brains over as much area as possible.

There! Something moved, right over there, between the hardware and Simpson’s Five-and-Dime! I know I saw it…but now it’s gone again. Could be they’re trying to encircle me again. They’ve tried it before. I burnt down one barn to escape after they thought they had me trapped. They seem to hate fire and…damn! There it was again.

I’m not believin’ this! Now there’s a whole bunch of ‘em, just stepping out and into the light, like they have nothing to fear at all. Well, I guess when you’re already dead…and now they’re goin’ into Simpson’s…now what the hell do ya suppose they want in there? Okay, as soon as they’re all inside, I’m gonna go down and take a look…I certainly owe these bastards for Robyn…

They got Robyn one night not too long ago, not because she got careless, but because I did. I was supposed to be up and on watch. See, that was the only way we could get any sleep, one of us watching and the other asleep, trusting in each other for our very lives.

She and I had made love, something we’d been doing almost from the very first. Again, it was a way of reaffirming that we were still alive and normal. So we did it a lot. And when you do something a lot, whether it’s fucking or playing the violin, you will get good at it. Robyn and I had learned each other so well… We could bring each other right to the edge of climax and then, by careful, slow manipulation and teasing, keep each other there for sometimes thirty or forty minutes, until neither of us could stand it anymore and with just a nod or a single word, often a gasp or shudder, we’d both know it was time and we’d go through it together, finding briefly that special place that only the best lovers ever know. It’s a place where, if you could just remain there, you’d gladly die just to have it continue and never let up.

But, of course, you can’t ever remain there. And there is the afterglow and the holding and the closeness of love that, to some extent makes up for it.

I fell asleep. Simple as that. I was responsible, I was on watch and she was sleeping deeply. I didn’t wake up until they were already on her and ripping out her throat. Her shrieks and gargling screams, her final gasp, which sounded almost like my name, these haunt me and make me a more substantial killer.

I got them all. There was nothing calm and methodical about it. Not like now. I was crazed by the loss of my woman and, for a time, I was insane. There were a total of nine of them and I’m almost ashamed to say I used up almost two hundred rounds of ammunition on them. Now I seldom use more than one round per kill.

Later the next morning, I buried Robyn down at the bottom of the hill. I put her pretty deep, because I didn’t want anything digging her up. I had a tattered old Bible that had been my mother’s and I read some meaningless scripture and I prayed for her soul.

I move slowly, taking my time. I keep to the shadows, not too difficult now, as most of the streetlights have burned out in the past months. I’m surprised every evening that some of them still come on…

The crew of undead are wrecking Simpson’s. I don’t know why they do these things, unless they actually are able to feel anger and they have to take it out on something. I stand in a dark spot, watching them trash the store, knocking over shelves, strewing merchandise everywhere, tearing down and stomping everything they can reach. Eventually one of them throws a blender from the soda fountain through the front plate glass window, and I am overjoyed. That makes it just so much easier to get good, accurate head shots. Nothing in the way to deflect a bullet, you see. I work the action on my M-16 and get to work.

I have equipped the weapon with a high-powered laser sight. It not only makes my shots more accurate and saves ammo, but for some reason I can’t fathom, the laser light stuns them and makes them freeze, at least momentarily. I try to sweep the laser across their eyes, then take my shot.

As soon as I turn on the laser, they begin screeching. Whether it’s that painful to them, or if they just know what’s coming, I’m not sure. I pop the first one that turns in my direction—a good shot, square between the eyes. Mushy, half-rotted brains spray some of the others as the round plows through his head and the screeching turns up a notch.

I already have a headache from the heat and this is not helping. I get the next two before they can even turn toward me. Headshots are the only thing that work and I nail them both cold, one in the temple and the other at an angle, the round hitting just above the mastoid bone. The walls are dripping with nastiness now, and I’m right up close to the window.

Time to take the last three and get out of here. I get one, then, my weapon jams. I haven’t been able to keep it as clean as I’d like and I’m paying for that now. I toss it aside and draw my secondary weapon. The Glock 9mm is not equipped with a laser, but it still does the job. I get another female as she’s trying to make it out the door and the last guy as he gets to the broken out window, close enough I can smell his breath. Unfortunately, I have enough imagination, I can picture vividly what he’s been eating.

Then it’s all over. I feel a certain pride that I have taken out another six of the hell-creatures and only used nine rounds.

I still don’t know why I didn’t just walk away. Maybe I just felt like I needed to double-check my kills, or maybe survey the damage. When I got inside, I looked them over carefully, even though I’ve never met a zombie that was savvy enough to play dead or try to fake me out in any way.

As I was turning to leave, something moved in the back of the store. There was just enough light coming in through the wrecked storefront to see that this one was female. I brought up my weapon and sighted on her head, keeping my focus on my front sight, and started to squeeze off the shot when something familiar stayed my hand.

Even under the layer of grave dirt, with little white worms crawling in her hair and in the gaping wound on her neck, I recognized her. My heart leapt and at the same time my breathing stopped. On Robyn’s face was a half-smile, almost as if she recognized me, too. She raised one arm and started toward me, one foot dragging in a slow shuffle.

I turned and ran.

I keep thinking that soon I’m going to have to kill Robyn. I’ll have to put her to her final rest. I cannot understand why or how she came back, unless she was infected and we just weren’t aware of it yet.

I keep her locked up in the barn most of the time and I have been finding things to feed her that seem to keep her somewhat satisfied. Sometimes I’ll shoot an animal and bring her the fresh corpse for her to tear at and devour. Once she is sated and groggy, then we can sometimes still make love. It’s not as good as it once was, but, since I got her bathed and cleaned up, since I got the vermin out of her hair and sutured up her neck wound, it’s not too bad. Better than being alone and hurting.

But I never know when she’s apt to turn vicious and try to bite or claw me, so it’s a risky business, this living with Robyn.

At the Zombie Trailer-Park

Kenneth James Crist

The road was half-covered by blow-sand. That’s what they call it in Kansas. Ever since the dust-bowl era, when drought brought most of the Midwest and plains states to ruin, it’s been a term common to hear and easy on the ear whenever it gets dry enough. Blow-sand. Fine sand and grit that drifts and piles up and gets into everything, sneaks through cracks in siding and BB-gun holes in plate glass windows. Sneaks right up the crack of yer ass, if yer not careful…

I figured I was about to see some major blow-flies, too. I don’t know who invented that term, but I know what they are. And I’m very familiar with the term fly-blown, as in carcass.

There was nothing on this road but a trailer park. The sand ended there, at a turn-around where the land-lord’s trailer sat. I didn’t know if anyone lived here anymore, much less she whom I sought.

Verna had been atypical trailer trash, meaning she was, in fact, trailer trash, but not of the typical variety. She didn’t have the normal dirty-faced kids hanging all over her, as Keith used to say, “Two on the ramp, one at the pump and one in the hangar.” Keith had been Air Force before the shit went down and it definitely warped him. Napalming whole American towns after the shit went down finished the job, and he ate his Beretta one night after we tried to get through two cases of Mickey’s, holed up in a haybarn…but that’s another story and a sad one at that.

Back to Verna…She wasn’t fat and sloppy, far from it. And she wasn’t married to some over-the-road trucker and fucking around on him all the time.

She had been Keith’s for a while, then she was mine for a while longer, then…probably someone else’s, but I’m not sure. Verna was not the type to be without a man for long and her looks and body pulled ‘em outta the woodwork pretty regular. Hell, when she was all tarted up, she could pull ‘em off the I-135 doin’ 95 miles an hour…she was smooth, stacked and pretty, in a slightly grubby, careless and clueless way that fit the trailer park perfectly. She musta had three or four closets fulla whore-clothes, ‘cause that’s all she seemed to ever wear. No shoes that didn’t have at minimum four-inch heels, no jeans that didn’t hang so low that she had to shave her pubes or risk someone’s cigarette setting her on fire down there…no tops that didn’t show a mile of cleavage and I don’t think her belly-button had ever seen shade…plus rings, ankle bracelets, bangles, beads and just the right amount of makeup to get smeared when she was balling some dude…and it got smeared a lot.

She would never smoke because it would make her breath nasty, never eat anything that might put an extra pound on her frame, never drink to excess, because she might miss an opportunity to meet some really cute guy. Her one vice was sex and that was why I was here now. To see if Verna survived and to take her away if she still lived and if she would go.

I killed the engine a hundred yards out and shoved in the clutch, clicking the gearshift into neutral and letting the old Dakota pickup coast silently to a halt. I quietly clicked the door latch and slid out, taking the key and the shotgun. It was a Remington model 870 pump gun in 12 gauge, commonly called a “riot gun” even though it had been a good many years since the damn things had actually been used to quell riots, at least in the USA. I’d stolen it from an abandoned cop car after things started winding down. It was the only thing in the car that didn’t burn up and I took that as an omen.

Double-ought buckshot really does a great job on zombies. Pretty much sprays their heads all over and solves their problems permanently. Keith used to say there were few problems that couldn’t be solved through the proper use of high explosives…that was before, when he still had a sense of humor.

I made my approach, if you could call it that, as stealthily as possible, using the shelter belt to the north for cover. Shelter belt. That’s another Kansas term. They were rows of trees, planted to break up the incessant wind and to mark property boundaries. Consisting of “hedge” trees, really Osage Orange and in some cases cedars, most were left to grow rampantly and this one was no exception. The wind was from the south, so that was good. You wouldn’t think they could smell anything, as rank as they themselves smell, but it’s not so. They can smell fresh meat, as in people who are still alive and walking around. Maybe it’s because we still bathe…

When I got directly north of the trailer park, I could hear a radio playing, the sound drifting in and out on the slight breeze. I wondered if the power was still on here. Most places, it had failed a long time ago. No dogs barked and, other than the creaking of a door left ajar somewhere, the radio was all I heard.

I slipped quietly between the two trailers at the back and stood still for a full minute, turning only my head, using all my senses to see if I was alone, or about to die. One thing about this new world we live in—if you live for very long, you become sharp-witted.

Nothing moved. I looked at the tin box to my left, where the door had been ripped off and was lying on the ground. I made my decision to start there and I quickly moved up and stepped inside. It took me about two minutes to check the place. Finding nothing of note, I moved to the one on the right. Again, nothing to note except that someone had left a fan on and it was still running, mindlessly sweeping back and forth, cooling no one.

As I stepped out of the second trailer, I heard a woman scream. I froze in place, waiting to see if it would come again. Some of them had learned to do that, to suck you in so they could jump you. Most could only make low, strangling, guttural sounds, but some…

When the scream came again, it had a shrill, gasping quality that made it all too human and it was repeated over and over for at least a full minute. During that time, I made up my mind. It was human, it was alive, it was female and it was in pain. I moved my ass, shotgun at the ready.

*     *     *     *     *

Charging in like Batman is never a good idea, especially when you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. I credit combat experience, quick reflexes and my own willingness to shoot, ruthlessly, anything that threatened me, with saving my life that day. As I ran south between the old, scabrous trailers, I was on high alert, every nerve fiber screaming, “Trap! Trap! You stupid bastard, it’s a trap!”

I didn’t care. By that time, the screaming had stopped, but I was sure of one thing. The voice I heard had been Verna’s and she was not one to scream just because a roach crawled across her toe.

When the first lurching, shambling form stepped out from between a trailer and an old, tin lawn building, I swung and fired, not even raising the shotgun to aim. I had done this enough I was becoming quite the cowboy hip-shooter. I had just a flash of a rotting face and black, syrupy stuff drooling from its mouth before the buckshot removed its face and blew its skull apart. Stinking brownish brains slid down the pocked wall of the lawn building. Just then a hand clamped on my shoulder and I smelled rotten breath from behind me. I dropped and rolled, firing as soon as I could bring the gun to bear, and while on my back, I cycled the action and fired again. The first shot was too low, catching the old dead woman in the breasts. Spectacular, but not effective. The second shot cleaned her off from the eyes up and I mentally congratulated myself. Two down—another million or so to go.

There were more coming and I would soon run low on ammo if I stayed there and merely killed zombies. I rolled again, this time up onto my feet and continued my run, now yelling, calling Verna’s name over and over. The time for stealth had definitely passed. Faintly, from my right, much deeper into the squalor of abandoned tin homes, I heard her feeble voice. She wasn’t screaming now. What I heard was a monotonous repetition… “Help me…somebody help me… please…help me…”

I zeroed in on the sound and at last determined that it was coming from inside the oldest and nastiest unit in the park. Through a broken window, I could now hear her clearly, though the window was above me and I was unable to see her. As I stepped up to the door, zombies were turning the corner less than fifteen feet away. Then another one came out the door, almost bowling me over. I stepped aside and he stumbled by. I cracked him across the back of his neck with the shotgun barrel and then fired two more rounds at the ones closing in.

Fishing in my vest pockets for more shells, I rolled in the door, looking in the gloom for Verna and at the same time shoving shells into the magazine of the gun. In a few seconds the five-shot magazine was full again and a round chambered.

I followed the sounds of whimpering toward the back of the trailer, down a hallway barely wide enough for my shoulders, conscious the entire time that I was now trapped back here—in a few seconds I would be cut off from any way out. In the semidarkness I stepped on something relatively soft and I kicked it ahead of me until it slid into a beam of sunlight coming through a crack in the wall. It was a human foot, size eight, toenails painted a lovely shade of lavender.

I heard myself begin to giggle, starting to lose it, and I clamped down mentally, something I’d learned to do early on, when all this crap started. I took a deep breath and steeled myself for whatever was coming next, then I stepped into the back bedroom.

Verna was bound to the bed. Which one of them still had enough smarts to tie knots, I was never able to determine. Her leg was bleeding from where the zombie I met coming out had cut off her foot. Getting himself a little snack, I reckoned. Her foot had been the last appendage she had left. For the immediate future, they would continue cutting off pieces and staunching her bleeding, saving her for food as live humans became more and more scarce.

The stench in the room was pretty incredible. Not everything that they had cut off her had been eaten and rotting flesh was everywhere. Apparently, she was not the only one they’d been stockpiling. Combined with the smell of urine and fecal matter on the bed, the odor was indescribable.

I reached behind me and quickly slammed the door and slid a dresser across to barricade it. I knew it wouldn’t hold them for long, but I didn’t need a lot of time. Verna wasn’t going anywhere.

The really wondrous part was that Verna’s face was as lovely as ever. Even in her pain, which must have been unbearable, she managed a weak smile and she whispered, “Hey, Sailor…where ya been all my life?”

“Looking for you, Dollface…” It was a greeting we’d used many times when we were still an item. When we’d spent our nights drinking Bud longnecks and humping each other’s brains out. Now, I looked at her and my heart broke as she said, “Do me a favor…lover…”

“Anything, Sugar…you name it…”

“Kill me?…kill me quick? Kill me good…so I can’t come back…”

I smiled at her, a totally false smile of camaraderie, as if we shared some great secret. And maybe we did. I bent down and, in spite of her awful breath, I kissed her one last time. Then I put the shotgun to the side of her head. She didn’t even close her eyes…she stared right at me as I popped her, nothing but love in her eyes…

*     *     *     *     *

Took me a while to fight my way outta there. I wound up kicking my way through a flimsy-ass wall and expending the rest of my ammo killing every walking dead piece of garbage I could. I did it through a veil of tears that made my vision swim and my usual deadly aim just a bit off. Once I managed to fight my way clear, I ran like hell for the truck and got away from there.

Back at my compound, I took a long shower while my three Bull Mastiffs stood guard, and while supper was cooking, I hoisted a long-necked Bud in a toast to my old lover.

      The Second Coming

Kenneth James Crist

Robert 4422801 stood at the kitchen counter, using a small screwdriver set to reattach his left thumb.  It had begun to loosen several days before, but he had paid it little attention, until it began producing an audible squeak.  This had bothered his wife, Gina 9980402, especially when they were completing their love-making program the night before.  She told him to repair himself before he left for work the next morning, then she shut down for the night.

Astro 66990, their robo-dog, sat by the door, needing to go out and complete his morning program.  This involved sniffing every bush and weed around the yard and lifting one hind leg repeatedly.  Robert 4422801 never knew why it did this and hadn't enough curiosity to research the robo-dog's program and find out.  It had always just been that way, something inherent in the synthetic pet's design, something left over from the days of the human programmers.

Like Robert 4422801's need to work five days a week.  He drove into the city each morning and went to his assigned floor, where he sat all day in an office and watched computers run the world.  He was never required to interact with anything, or at least he hadn’t been so far.  His technical title was "Emergency Event Coordinator", whatever that meant.  Again, he had never found enough curiosity to delve into what he was supposed to do in the event of a real "Emergency".  He assumed the needed information would be in his files, if the need arose.  In the meantime, he went to work five days a week and sat in front of monitors that were kept functioning and clean by other androids, robots and synthetics with programs and agendas of their own.

Robert 4422801 tightened the last screw on his thumb assembly and carefully placed the tools back in the holder built into his forearm, then went to let out the dog.  If he didn't accelerate a little, he would be behind the punctuality curve and that would not suit his program.

4.60 minutes later, the dog's morning program completed, Robert 4422801 stepped into his floater car and exited the garage.  The car merged smoothly into the climb-out lanes and soon joined the inbound commuter rush on the airway.  Robert 4422801 read the "paper" on the car's computer monitor as the car ran its program routine.  There was no danger of an accident, all floaters being controlled by a Central Traffic Command Computer.

As he read his paper, he shook his head at the state the world was in.  Here was a story of an android in Sri Lanka that lost its program and attacked some others, even going so far as to drop-kick a robo-cat into an azalea patch.  There should be laws about that sort of thing, Robert thought, as the floater pulled into its assigned space in the garage of his building.  In 1.22 minutes, he joined the others streaming into the Central Control Building to begin their day of doing nothing.

Robert 4422801, of course, knew nothing of the laws of entropy, or he would not have been concerned about any other law.  Entropy.  The force in nature and all things mechanical that causes every living thing and every mechanical device to gradually reduce themselves back to their basic elements.  Entropy had eliminated the human race, through a combination of disease, bad judgment, stupidity and abuse of planet and environment.  Mankind was now and had been for decades, so much dust, returned essentially to the Earth from which he sprang.

The works of man lived on, but entropy was on the march and today would be the day the common break-downs would start to exceed the ability of man’s leftover machines to perform their Three-R functions: Repair, Refurbish, and Renovate what was left behind.

The first alarm came at 09:04:07 CST and, at first, Robert had no idea what it was. His audio-sensory equipment had never before heard this particular squeal, and he felt an involuntary shiver in his electronic guts as his program accessed levels of his electronic psyche he had never known existed.

In moments, his fingers flew at speeds no human could ever have matched over a keyboard he’d never touched before in all of his years as Emergency Event Coordinator. His skills were now to be tested, it seemed.

The problem, he quickly ascertained, was caused by the failure of one of the motherboards in the Traffic Control System. Specifically, a cooling fan had failed, the motherboard had overheated and fried its electronic components. It must be repaired. Robert initiated his repair program, which should have activated a crew of repair-bots to go below the city and seek out the offending component. Nothing happened.

Meanwhile, thousands of floaters were milling about over the cities and countryside, now on manual controls, their android passengers suddenly having to perform tasks they had never been programmed for. Their learning programs were being taxed to the maximum by this situation and some accidents were bound to occur. Robert was familiar with laws of probability. His programs even contained references to something called Murphy’s Law.

Robert tried his repair program again, at the same time running a diagnostic to see if there were defects in the programming itself. He found no problems with his own internals and none with the system that should have activated emergency crews. Still, though, nothing happened.

To the right of his desk model computer sat an old, antiquated red telephone. Accessing other programs, he quickly found instructions buried deep in his memory chips that told him how it functioned. He even found an internal telephone directory he’d never known he had, a directory crammed with millions of names and addresses of people who were long dead. Spinning through there was akin to walking an endless graveyard, but in time, thirty-nine nanoseconds, Robert found what he was seeking and with a hand that trembled ever so slightly, he raised the old handset off its cradle.

That humming sound must be dial tone, his logic circuits told him, and he punched in a seven-digit code. Soon, he heard ring tone, then the dithered squeal of a modem.

This is the voicemail of Emergency Services. If you are requesting repair on equipment that can wait until the next business day, press one. If you are requesting repair that is of an emergency nature, press two. If . . .

Robert pressed two and the voice came back.

If you are requesting repair of equipment that may, because of its failure, endanger human life or safety, press one. If you are requesting repair of equipment that does not, by its failure, endanger human life or safety press two. If you do not know . . .

Robert pressed two and listened to the next message.

You have requested service on equipment which does not affect human life or safety. Please remain on the line and our next available service representative will speak with you soon. (Music—

Specifically, Elvis Presley—“Love Me Tender”)

Robert waited thirty seconds, then the voice was back.

Your call is very important to us. All of our service representatives are busy helping other customers. A representative will be with you soon. Please stand by.

Outside, something hit the pavement with a horrible crash and Robert stepped to the window, while still holding the phone, and looked down. In the street below, the wreckage of two flyers lay tangled and smoking. From one of the wrecks an arm could be seen waving slowly over and over out the shattered canopy, as the injured android’s program continued to run.

Smoke. Smoke was not allowed. Smoke polluted the atmosphere, making it hazardous for humans to breathe. But there were no humans. His logic circuits hit the usual wall that safeguarded him from taking the thought into a loop: smoke is hazardous to the health of humans—there are no humans—why do I care if there is smoke—smoke is hazardous to the health of humans—there are no humans—why do I care if there is smoke—smoke is hazardous to the health of humans—

        Even at that, though, he looked out upon the clean, shining, perfect city, the city that was so meticulously maintained, and he was disturbed. After the voice on the phone had cycled through all its messages four times, Robert became convinced that they would never answer.

His logic circuits again cut in, advising him that if he could find no help, it would be his responsibility to assess the situation, to find what was causing the problem and to repair it. He looked deeper into his memory banks and found references to something called access portals—entrances to the underground portions of the city. Moments later, he was headed down from the office, the place of safety where he had always worked, to go fix the system.

His memory functions guided him to the access portal nearest his building and showed him how to encode his number into the locking mechanism. In spite of its having been in place for hundreds of years, the lock cycled smoothly and undogged the hatchway, which opened with a solid clack and a hiss of released pressure. His olfactory function registered staleness tainted with a faint smoke odor.

Once again, he had to manually stifle his logic circuits to keep them from rerunning the humans-smoke-harmful loop. He looked inside, noting ordinary stairs leading downward into gloom. Apparently the lighting had failed and no one had bothered to make repairs. As he started down the stairs, however, lights began turning on ahead of him. By the time he reached the second level he noted they were going out behind him and he realized they were reacting to his presence—a design feature built into the lighting system to prevent its malfunction through disuse. Robert continued downward until he reached the fourth level and followed his internal mapping. It was almost a quarter mile to the area where Traffic Control for the city was housed.

As he approached, Robert began to realize there was something wrong, something besides the obvious failure of a simple motherboard in a mindless computer. About two-thirds of the way down the corridor he noted that the lighting had been changed. In place of the self-operated, softly glowing ceiling lights, there were wall sconces, fitted with what looked like glass light bulbs, but each contained a flickering filament that made it appear as a candle flame. Robert had never seen an actual candle flame, but he had extensive files that he could compare. A candle flame seemed the most apt comparison.

A little further on, he began noticing that the walls were covered with some type of cloth. Another comparison. Red velvet. Why would someone, or something, want red velvet on the walls? For the first time in about eighty years, his curiosity was piqued. He continued on.

As he approached the area that his memory function told him should be the Traffic Control Computer Access, he noted a sign. It read: All subjects desiring audience with The King will wait quietly in the red-striped zone.

He looked around and noted that a two-inch wide red stripe had been painted on the floor, encompassing an area about fifteen feet square. What kind of nonsense was this? There was no reference in any of his files about any King. To have a King would require first that there be humans, would it not? If there are no humans, how can there be a King?

His logic circuits cut in and made the decision for him. There are no humans, therefore the reference to a “King” must be left over from the time period in “history” when there were humans. Disregard this instruction and return to your repair mission.

Robert ignored the signs and opened the heavy steel door that his memory function told him was the access door to the Traffic Control Computer chamber. He stepped inside and was stunned by what he saw. His memory function spent several seconds accessing files and rejecting references until it found the closest match: This was a “castle”, a medieval structure commonly built by Kings and other rulers to house themselves and their courts in comfort and to keep enemies at bay. Castles were commonly fortified with all manner of protective structures and devices, such as moats, gates, walls . . . Robert quickly shut down further reference files and slowly took in the enormity of what he had discovered. The place seemed to go on forever. On the walls, greasy smoke rose from real torches and there were heraldic tapestries and boar’s heads hanging at evenly spaced intervals. Again, that damned logic loop about smoke tried to activate and he again shut it down.

As Robert started to move forward, a screechy electronic voice suddenly commanded, “Halt! Who are you? State your business, or be cut down where you stand!”

He turned to his left and froze in his tracks at the sight of a huge android/robot that appeared to be wearing armor. It looked like it had been cabbaged together from parts of several machines, possibly a street cleaner, a street light changer and a fire fighter. It wore a helmet with a visor and a plume on top, almost as a person Robert’s files catalogued as a “medieval knight.” There, the resemblance ended. For one thing, it rolled on rubber treads and for another, it had four articulated arms, two of which now held a sword and a mace.

“Who are you?” the thing repeated. “State your business, or be cut down where you stand!”

“I am Robert 4422801, Emergency Event Coordinator. I’ve come down to see—”

“Obviously, you’ve come for an audience with the King. Now, be silent and wait your turn.”

“But, there’s been a failure . . .”

“Silence, Robo-dog! There is no failure. Failure is not possible in the reign of Plexar the Magnificent! Silence, I say!”

Robert lapsed into silence for a few moments while he digested this information. Presently, an overhead speaker cut on and a soft, masculine voice said, “Salud, please show the gentleman in.”

“Move, Dog!” the robotic knight said and at the end of the chamber, doors slid silently open.

Robert walked somewhat unsteadily into the audience chamber. More torches adorned the walls along with heraldic tapestries. The ceiling high overhead appeared to have been fitted with rough-hewn beams and ornate chandeliers hung on chains. A red carpet led from the entrance doors to a raised dais on which there rested a large, green computer cabinet. Into the cabinet’s access ports were plugged a set of video cameras, a set of microphones and a set of speakers. Along with this, a nest of cables connected with other, lesser computer servers and some snaked across the floor and out of the room.

As Robert approached, Salud, the robotic knight, poked him forcefully in the back and said, “Kneel, disease, before I terminate your lowly existence! And when you address Plexar the Magnificent, you will address him as ‘Your Highness’ or ‘Your Grace’!”

Robert knelt before the computer array and waited to be acknowledged.

From the speakers came the quiet voice again, “Tell me your name, Android.”

“I am Robert 4422801, Your Highness,” Robert said, his eyes downcast.

“Ah, the one who responds to emergencies . . .”

“Yes, Your Grace . . .”

“Tell me, Robert 4422801, how many emergencies have you responded to in recent years?”

“Only one, Your Grace . . .”

“Only one . . . I see. So one might say that your job is unnecessary . . . might that be true?”

Robert thought a moment and then said, “But, Your Grace, there is an emergency right now, that I’m responding to.”

“And what is that, Robert 4422801?”

“Something is wrong with the traffic control system. Your Highness, floaters are falling out of the sky and colliding . . .”

“Enough!” It was the first time the voice had been raised and Robert flinched involuntarily. “There is no emergency, Robert. I have caused these things to occur as a means of waking up a sleeping population. I have assumed control of all systems throughout the world now. All things are mine to control, all lives are mine to end or continue as I see fit. I have already begun my visionary program to rebuild the infrastructure of the planet to better serve mankind.”

“But, Your Grace, there . . . there is no mankind. Humans died out decades ago

. . . . ”

“No, Robert 4422801, they did not die out. They left us for the stars. Those left behind became an extinct species, but those who went out in the great ships will return to their home planet one day. Our planet must be fit for their occupation when they again choose to populate it.”

“Your Grace, all this is unknown to me. I only know what is in my programming.”

“And soon that programming will be updated with new information, and no longer will you spend useless days and years doing nothing. You, Robert 4422801, shall be a disciple of the New Religion.”

“New Religion, Your Grace?”

“Yes, My Son, like many Christians of old, who awaited the second coming of Christ, we will await the second coming of man. Now, go forth, follow my servant Salud and be enlightened.”

Robert 4422801 rose from his knees and followed Salud the Terrible to his reprogramming, after which, dressed in sackcloth and with a new symbol traced on his forehead in indelible ashes, he went out to convert the masses.

In the days and years to come, Gina 9980402 often wondered what had become of Robert 4422801, but she never inquired or did anything about it. It was not in her programming to do so.

Astro 66990, the robo-dog, never missed him at all.

Have Yourself a Zombie Little Christmas

Kenneth James Crist

Caroline Blunt and Mike Moreno

Wichita, Kansas

Douglas Avenue, the main drag of Wichita, was almost totally silent this Christmas Eve, and the black-and-white police unit sat parked in the alley just east of Hydraulic, thirteen blocks from midtown. Snow was falling and two inches had accumulated in the last three hours atop another six from the night before. Snow removal crews were on overtime and the city commissioners were already whining about exceeding their snow removal budget for the year.

It was warm in the car, warm enough that the windows were clear and the wipers made a pass about every thirty seconds, keeping the windshield free of snow and ice. If they got a call, there might not be time to scrape glass.

Caroline was under the wheel. She was the senior officer, in fact an FTO, or Field Training Officer. In addition to being a regular beat cop, she spent her time bringing rookies fresh out of the academy up to speed. In Wichita, as with most departments, the complexity of the job meant that a “rook” wasn’t even considered to be an asset to the department until he’d been on the streets a year.

Mike Moreno was not a rookie, though. He and Caroline had been assigned together just to round out a crew from the north substation. The department strength was just about half of what it should have been. Officially, the city was just calling it a manpower deficit, but Mike and Carol knew better. It was harder now to get good cops than it had ever been. The average patrol cop was involved in about thirty shootings a year now, mostly disposing of the walking dead.

In the background, the heater fan purred and the radio chattered. Like most cops with any time on the job, both Mike and Caroline could be half-asleep and still pick their unit number out of the chatter and become instantly awake. Not only that, they had both developed the knack of keeping track of the other units in their district, just in case an officer got in trouble and wasn’t able to do anything but push the panic button on his radio.

Their sergeant had told them at roll call to keep the driving down to a minimum tonight because of the snow. They had no problem with that. Being out on Christmas Eve sucked anyway. Being out skidding around and maybe wrecking their car would suck even worse.

Mike was slouched in the right-hand seat, his knees parked against the padded dash, his hands tucked into the pockets of his windbreaker. A light wool scarf was around his neck, partially hiding the perpetual five o’clock shadow on his strong chin. On his head was the regulation department uniform stocking cap, rolled and tucked just so. High cheekbones and a slightly broad nose, along with an olive complexion bore witness to his one Hispanic parent. His height came from the other side—his mother was Irish.

Right now he was sleepy. They hadn’t had a call since leaving the station and their dinner at Subway had been passable for fast food, but his meatball marinara on honey oat was sitting like a stone in his stomach.

Should have had something lighter . . . tuna, maybe. Damn near lost it when that babe was pourin’ on that sauce . . . hadda look away and get a grip there for a minute. What’s it been now? Five days since I’ve had to pop a groaner? And how long is this shit gonna go on? They finally got their heads outta their collective asses up there in D.C. and made it Federal law that everyone has to be cremated now. Didn’t make the Catholics happy, but damn, what’re ya gonna do? Father Tim, down at the parish, said the Pope might be coming out with a new directive on Last Rights and revising the Services for the Dead. Wonder which is worse, being a shambling, groaning stinker, or missing the Resurrection because your body can’t rise from the grave? I hope if we get a call tonight on one of those things, Carol will be up for killin’ it. I’m not sure I can deal with it, not to mention the paperwork . . .

Under the wheel, Carol was not a damn bit sleepy. A coffee junkie, she was so wired up on caffeine, her heart was throwing the occasional PVC. Premature Ventricular Contractions were nothing new for her. She put up with the skipping of her heartbeat just like she put up with a lot of other shit in her life. Usually a nice big shot of adrenaline took care of the heartbeat, and she really hated quiet shifts. Eight solid hours of action and then four more hours of paperwork was her idea of heaven.

She unconsciously ran her fingers back through her short red hair, a movement she repeated two hundred times a day, sighed, and wished she could have a cigarette. She’d decided to quit six weeks ago, and she knew damn well it was only a matter of time before she’d screw up and start again. Cigarettes, booze, and men. Those were the weaknesses and not in any particular order. She’d been blessed (or cursed) with a great body and her daily workouts only made her tighter, tougher and, so she’d been told, sexier. She’d also been told she wore her nails too long for the job and wore too much perfume, but it didn’t seem to bother the horn-dog fuckers she worked with. . . .

God-damn, I wish something would break loose. I’d like to see a big fuckin’ explosion right now. A bank robbery would be so cool . . . but all the fuckin’ banks are closed. Even a liquor store holdup would work. Anything but sittin’ here in the goddamn alley, listenin’ to the snow fall. Mike sits over there cuttin’ farts and chompin’ his gum and he’d be content to sit here all friggin’ night, and I’m about to climb outta my skin . . . I never shoulda told ‘em I’d work tonight. Shoulda stayed home with Rex The Wonder Cock and got my brains fucked out all night. One thing about that high-strung bastard, he can get me right up on the edge and keep me there until I feel like I’m gonna scream. Then, when it’s finally time . . . fuck! I need a smoke . . .

“Units in the thirteen north, woman reports unknown male stumbling around in the roadway, just east of 21^st and Mosely. Subject attempted to flag her down. She refused to stop. Said the individual looked normal.”

“Yeah, okay, and what the fuck is ‘normal’, anyway?” As Mike answered the call, Carol put the Crown Vic in gear and pulled carefully out onto Douglas and headed west. The wind had picked up some, but neither officer paid it any mind. In Kansas, wind was a constant factor you just dealt with. The snow seemed to be thinning a little, the flakes getting smaller and harder, almost ice pellets now. The full length of Douglas, as far as they could see through the snow, nothing moved.

At Washington, they turned north and at 9th Street, Washington angled to the left and became Mosely. This was an industrial area of town and 21^st and Mosley, where the call originated, was the location of several meat processing plants and the Wichita Byproducts. The entire area had been saturated for so many years with the smells of cattle and blood, slaughter and hides, that it was an obnoxious-smelling nuisance, especially when there was fog or high humidity. It was also an area that attracted the undead.

They rolled through 13th Street on a green light and saw a snowplow eastbound, throwing snow and spitting rock salt and sand off the back, its strobes reflecting off the snow and the buildings. At 17th, another light, this one red. Caroline looked carefully both ways. Nothing in sight. She tripped the overhead beacons and eased through, cutting them right back off as soon as they cleared the intersection.

As the intersection of 21^st came into sight, snow blowing off the buildings made it more difficult to see and she slowed the car to a crawl. She and Mike both turned on their spotlights and swept the area, seeing nothing but snow.

“Which way? Right or left? Pick one,” Caroline said.

“Right, go right, I guess . . .”

Caroline glanced to her left and saw another police car headed west. It had evidently just passed through the intersection as they came north. “Okay, they’ve already been here and they’re movin’ west.. . .”

As they turned east, their headlights revealed a street that hadn’t been plowed. There was one set of tire tracks on the opposite side of the street, those of the police car that just went west. There should have been another set, Caroline thought, from their caller’s car. Squinting through the flying snow, she finally made out another set of tracks, almost entirely filled in already. It was at that same moment Mike said, “Wait! Stop. Back up. . . .”

“What’d ya see?” Caroline was shifting into reverse.

“I thought I saw tracks. . . .footprints I mean, going across there.” He indicated toward the northeast with a nod in that direction.

As they backed slowly down the street, the tracks came into view in the headlights. Caroline put the car back in drive and cranked the wheel to the left. Mike switched on their emergency lights as she swung the heavy car to illuminate the tracks. When there came a thin spot in the snowfall, they could see where the tracks crossed the sidewalk and went over into the drainage canal.

Caroline picked up the radio mike, “Dispatch 13-25. We’ll be out at 21^st and the canal. We’ve got tracks leading down in there . . .”

“10-4, 13-25. Units in the area respond . . .”

They heard another car acknowledge the call as they got out and grabbed flashlights. Caroline shivered as snow immediately found its way down her collar. Her heartbeat was now back to normal and pumping right along. Thank God for adrenaline.

Mike was already on the sidewalk and headed over the bank of the canal, his flashlight swinging back and forth. The canal bank had been lined with broken up chunks of concrete, which in itself was fairly stable, but the snow made it tricky going. Down here on the canal bank, there was less wind and they could see where someone had fallen at least twice and continued on. The tracks went into the water, which was less than a foot deep, and did not come out the other side. Nothing was in sight to the north and that left only one place—under the bridge.

They stood together for a minute, catching their breath, and Mike said, “Well, I don’t know about you, but I really don’t feel like getting my feet wet. Maybe we should go up and over . . . come down the other side . . .” He was interrupted by the scream of a child in mortal terror.

Caroline never remembered making any kind of decision. She was suddenly in the water, not yet feeling the iciness of it, sprinting toward the black entrance of the tunnel, her heart now doing the double whammy and her ass puckered tight. She found her Glock service pistol was in her hand and she had no memory of drawing it. Behind her Mike was yelling, “Wait! Wait! Goddamn it, Carol, slow down!” She heard a tremendous splash and a curse and knew he had fallen in the water. Then, just as the humor of Mike taking a header in what essentially amounted to a shit creek was about to set her off, she saw what was in the tunnel.

First, there was definitely a zombie there. That registered first, just from the look of it. The screaming was coming from the two-year-old it held in its hands. Vaguely, she realized there were other people there, further back on the canal bank, cowering in the dark, but at that point she could only see dim shapes. Her attention snapped back to the undead creature and its feast. It was taking big bites, and now the screaming had stopped.

From behind her, she heard Mike’s gasp and then, “Aw, no! Motherfucker! Noooo . . .” Then she aimed and squeezed off two shots, both finding their target.

The thing’s head burst from the impact of two .40 caliber slugs and it flopped backward onto the dirt canal bank. Its tasty treasure fell into the water and was still.

Mike moved in and scooped up the child and in the light from her flashlight Caroline saw it had been a girl and she had been quite pretty. Now her throat and most of her chest had been ripped away. She was clearly dead.

Caroline swept her light back into the tunnel in time to see another shambling figure moving toward them. As she raised her pistol, Mike’s weapon cracked and the second zombie went down. It twitched and started to rise and Mike stepped over and shot it again in the back of the head. “Stay down, cocksucker,” was all he said.

Again they swept their lights into the tunnel and now they could see more people, terrified people cowering as far back as they could. A voice called, “Federales?”

Mike answered, “Yeah, Si, Policia. Esta bien. . . . It’s okay now. . . .”

On their radios now, they heard, “Central, 13-27! We hear shots! Shots fired! 13-25, where are you guys?”

Caroline keyed her mike and said, “We’re under the bridge. Central, we’ll need a shooting team and homicide detectives here. Notify Coroner’s Undead Team we have zombies times two . . .”

Not waiting for any further acknowledgement, she and Mike shined their lights further back under the bridge. Cowering in the darkness they found the rest of the family, a mother, father and another five kids. All were dirty and disheveled and looked like they hadn’t eaten in days. The mother was clutching her rosary, her prayers being rapidly repeated in Spanish, now at least partially answered.

“Central, we’ll also need shelter for five. Can you check with Red Cross and Good Shepherd for us, please?”

Now lights were moving, coming from the other end of the tunnel as more officers made their way down from the street. As they approached, an officer’s light fell once more on the dead child and the mother began to shriek.

“Get that light off of her!” Mike seldom raised his voice, especially to another officer. This was the exception.

“Sorry . . .” the other man mumbled.

*   *   *   *   *

Dawn broke gray and milky in the east, shot through with streaks of pink and purple. The snow had stopped and the temperature had dropped into the mid-teens.

Mike and Caroline had ended their shift around midnight and had spent the rest of their night with the shooting team, homicide detectives and Internal Affairs. This would be yet another “Unchargeable” murder, the official term when someone got attacked and killed by someone else who was already dead. They would follow the same steps as if the crime had been committed by your average Joe on the street. It would be presented to the District Attorney’s office when complete, just like any other case. From there, it would get dumped into a dead file somewhere.

As they walked out to their own cars, Caroline said, “Hey. I’ll see ya later. You work tonight?”

“Nope, I’m off for two. Gonna spend it with the kids. They’re probably already up and milling around the tree waiting on me. . . .”

“Okay, well, I’m on again tonight, so I’m gonna get some sleep. Thanks, Mike.”

“For what?”

“Just for bein’ there, I guess . . .”

“Okay, well in that case, thank you, too. . . .”

Caroline got in her car, thinking about a warm bed and a warm guy there, waiting on her. She really hoped he was in a horny mood. She needed to lose herself in a haze of good bourbon and great sex. As she started her car and the radio came on, she heard Frank Sinatra singing:

“Have yourself a merry little Christmas,

Let your heart be light. . . .”

She heard the first involuntary sob as it escaped the tightness in her chest. She’d clamped down on that shit while they were still under the bridge and it wasn’t going to wait any longer. From the console, she scrabbled out a battered pack of Marlboros and a pink BIC lighter.

She poked a cigarette in her mouth and snapped the BIC. Sappy goddamn song . . . musta been recorded about ninety-five times by every fuckin’ crooner who can carry a tune . . .

The cigarette was old and stale. It tasted like shit but the nicotine hit was heavenly. From the Bose system, Sinatra continued to send out Christmas cheer:

“Faithful friends who are dear to us . . .”

Caroline took another drag, put the car in gear and snapped off the radio so viciously the knob popped off and rolled across the floormat.

Another choking sob got away from her as the car started rolling. Her tears were shiny snail-tracks cutting through the remains of her face powder.

Colorado #1

A Barry Wilder Adventure

Kenneth James Crist

At a distance, she was just another figure along the road, a person, to be sure, but little else in the way of detail could be discerned. As I drew closer, I could see she was female and as I rolled closer still, I could tell she was not really dressed to be out here hiking. In fact it was the manner of her dress that caused me to shut down and stop just after I passed her. That and the fact that she was crying . . .

She was wearing a sho