by submission | Sep 30, 2011 | Story |
Author : Damien Krsteski
Just as I made my way next to an older lady on the pew, the general climbed on the stage. All the commotion died down, everyone’s ears eager to hear him speak. After some quieting down, he began, his tone as morose as the weather outside.
“My fellow citizens, in these dire times, know that your leaders are still among you.” Loud cheering greeted the introduction to what I knew would be a well-prepared speech.
“We have endured thus far and rest assured, victory will be ours.” More cheering ensued, to the point where I felt the urge to cup my ears. But I couldn’t, so I joined in, and clapped loudly myself. I found it rather amusing, if not somewhat pathetic.
“It has been seven years since the war began and although we have suffered great loss our spirits haven’t withered the least bit. We’ll rid ourselves of the abomination from the sky,” He pointed upwards and some people including the lady beside me gasped audibly.
Abomination from the sky? Really?
“Those creatures landed on our soil, on our very Earth, drinking our water, polluting our air.”
At around this time I must have dozed off since I can’t recall anything more. I sat there, breathing the stale air of the church, measuring the pauses between each cacophonous cheering of the edgy crowd. The woman seated beside me must have noticed how distracted I was and leaned towards me.
“I lost my oldest sun in the war,” she whispered, the general’s voice echoing all around us. “At the battle of Midland. His captain said he died as a true hero, bringing down a dozen of those slimy scum with him as he went.” She produced a silver medal from her coat pocket. “Two generals drove up to our house to personally hand me this.”
I took it from her hand, trying to feel up the metal but all that skin rendered the attempt futile. I will never get used to those sacs. I handed it back to her, nodded and offered my condolences.
Around that time the general was finishing up with the speech, calling for more endurance, more faith in their country. The time had come. People all over the church stood up, raising their fists in approval. I gave one last look at the crowd, trying to memorize as many faces as I could and savor the moment. With one click of a button the whole scene vanished.
I woke many miles away, rid of human skin but with a horrible migraine. Wrapping one tentacle around my neck, I massaged the spot up and down.
A small inconvenience for a job well done. Get some rest then get on with the next one. Although before I do so, I think thirty-seven skin-sacs deserves a silver medal too. I must remember to mention it to the suits, I’m positive it’ll look great on me.
by submission | Sep 29, 2011 | Story |
Author : Cal Glover-Wessel
I guess I thought there would be more turmoil, more mounting panic, but when you know the date and time of the end I guess it’s easier to accept it. There were no riots; there were no religious upheavals. It was as if the whole world had skipped every stage of grief and was ready to ride this one out. I tried to explain everything to my son, Harlan. He was petrified, of course. He didn’t really understand. He had always relied on me to fix the problems and have all the answers, but here was something so big that even I couldn’t fix it. He saw right through my calm facade. If I was terrified in his eyes, what hope did he have? I’d forbidden him to watch TV as to avoid the hype and the pretense, so he would spend all of his time watching the sky. There were times I needed to shut his blinds so he’d stop watching the stars and go to bed, but sometimes I would watch with him.
I had a dream the night the world ended. I was driving through the desert in my first car from high school, a dark blue clunker of a Buick. The clouds were heavy and thunder rumbled all around me, but there was no rain. Massive gray birds flew overhead, sharply pointed wings cutting the heavy clouds; fat red crests sitting over solemn hooked beaks. They flew towards and perched upon an iron tower far ahead of me, and as I sped towards them they began to scream. Their shrieks grew louder and more frequent as I drove closer to the tower, and soon the screams pierced even the thunder. I drove ever faster and as the monstrous birds screamed the clouds parted above their heads and a blinding beautiful light shone through. As I drew closer the bird’s shrieking squawks become more mechanical and more monotone until they had blended entirely with my alarm and I awoke, my body still tired but my thoughts clear.
It’s dark now in my room, but out the window I can still see the stars. I walk into Harlan’s room and gently shake him awake. We step outside onto our walkway. There are no streetlights in our neighborhood, but I can see the lights from neighbors’ houses. Some of them have stepped outside like us, while others wait indoors. Our own stoop light shines behind Harlan and me, casting our shadows on the lawn. I watch his tiny shadow reach out and clutch at my shadow, and I feel his arms around my leg. I pick him up and hold him as we look at the sky and wait.
First the lights go out.
And then the stars.
by submission | Sep 26, 2011 | Story |
Author : Dave Rudden
It screamed as the last of the connectors plunged in.
A proper scream, a gut-scream, lifting it off the surgical table in an arched back gasp-shudder orgasm of pain and raw hate that made every hair on my exposed arm shiver with sweet appreciation. The med-arms retracted, drizzling blood from hair-blade edge and tweezer barb.
The thing on the table exhaled in a servo-whine. Its ceramic eyelids fluttered.
I had found her in the Big Nothing, a petty thief fuelling a click habit by turning over liquor stores and the occasional food depot. My God, she had been beautiful. A curved blade of a girl with dark eyes and the rainbow slick of a chem-tat on her cheek, barely five foot of muscle and slick leather. It had taken two blocks to run her down. I could have stunned her, used the up-scale neural amp that had taken me six months to acquire on the black market, but part of me had wanted to watch her run.
The first test.
She had moved like liquid silver, darting from shadow to neon-furred shadow, looping through the nonsense-pattern of streets, scaling fire escapes and metro-cables. She took down a cambot with a thrown knife, doubled back to crush another with a purloined length of rebar. I doubt she even asked herself who her pursuers were. She just ran. That pureness, that simple, animal lust for freedom…
Beautiful.
In the end, she had turned to fight, pulling a gapper pistol on the cowled figures that had matched her step for step across half the streets of the Big Nothing. That impressed me. Far beyond the obvious physical parameters, a certain… fortitude was required. A need to fight. A hateful, scraping, primal need to survive, no matter the odds.
She had shot two before they had taken her screaming into the dark.
It had not been easy, getting this far. She had flatlined twice during the procedures, and but for her common blood type I would have had to dismiss her as a usable subject at all. Her implants would most likely be rejected, if they interfaced at all. The thing on the table let out another hissing breath, and struggled to rise on limbs of slick ceramic and steel, the joints purring as they fought to respond. It would be days before the neural links moved as smoothly as un-augmented flesh.
Her voice, when it came, was a trembling warble of static.
“What am I?”
A capital crime, I thought. An experiment with weeks to live. But a death I will learn from, and the next girl, the next thief or click-addict or whore, will live just that little bit longer. And then all of you will be remembered, in that first prototype, that first shaking step.
My voice cracked as I replied.
“You are the future.”
by submission | Sep 25, 2011 | Story |
Author : Donovan Pruitt
So much blood. My blood.
The wind shouted for just a moment, throwing sand over the stone and down my back. My hat tumbled off lazily, dancing in the dirt, taunting me out of arms reach. I wouldn’t move for it. Move and I’m dead.
My duster stank of whiskey, the scorched edges giving it a nose of salted caramel. God, I wish I had a drink. Just one sip. Even Martian grain would taste like an angel’s lips.
Energy blasts chipped at the stone behind me, eroding my cover, shaping my tombstone. I flipped my revolver down, opening the chamber. Six holes, five were smoking, empty craters. One cartridge left: the Firebolt. It only sounds impressive.
“Draw, pig!” he shouted, not even halfway down the street, now. Bryonis Clayton, wanted for robbery and murder. Lots of murders. About to be one more.
Sheriff was his last, about ten minutes ago. He pushed his wet, red star into my hand, told me he smelled lilacs, and then choked on his own blood behind the bar while broken bottles of whiskey rained all over us. I took his gun, took his honor, and ran after Clayton.
“Is my bullet feeling good in you, boy?” he taunted me, shoving more cartridges in his gun. He had plenty. I had two: mine, and the one inside me. The second one wasn’t helping.
There was a deafening roar as a transport ship sped off overhead as fast as it could, carrying hundreds of souls to the heavens. Guess they left without me. That’s okay, though; I’ll find my own chariot and ride it around Clayton’s house in hell, shouting his name into forever like a damn gnat he can’t get rid of. That’ll show him.
I snapped the revolver back, drew the hammer with a strain until it clicked. Everything hurt. My eyes blurred, but I stood up, partially hunched over with a death grip on my gun. I stared at Clayton, gritting my teeth. He displayed his with a smile. He gave me an elaborate gesture, a mockery of aristocratic practices intending to show me he’d honor the showdown. He knew I was dead. He believed he already won. He was right.
“Tell the devil I’m fucking coming!” I spit at him, jerking my wrist up. I couldn’t even raise my arm or level my shot, but I fired anyway. Then I closed my eyes, accepting it for what it was.
Luck.
The Firebolt hit him in his shooting arm, blowing it back to its drawing position with a lick of flame in the air no more brilliant than a firework. He screamed, but instinct had already overwhelmed his muscle memory, and the vision of fire blooming in the air must have made him think I shot a Dragon’s Breath judging by the fearful look in his widening eyes. He fired a round into the dirt without even feeling it. It was a Boomer. It went boom, then it tore him in half.
Gravity won me over. I smacked into the dirt, lips embracing my resting place. The bare, dusty feet of a barmaid ran toward me, kicking up a trail. She knelt down and squeezed a bladder into my mouth. Martian grain, piss of the red planet. It tasted like an angel’s lips.
Forcing my pale mouth into a toothy grin, my fingers twitched with the Sheriff’s star toward her. A crowd looked on, rubberneckers of three murders.
“Tell them…I smell steak,” I puffed out with my last breath. It sounded better than lilacs.
by submission | Sep 24, 2011 | Story |
Author : David Shute
They’ve had me running assassination jobs for awhile now. Terrorists, political loose ends, and the occasional despot in between bigger jobs.
It kicked off with Nan Kang-Dae, a North Korean defector picked up by the Chinese authorities. His government had managed to turn him into a firestarter, a pyrokinetic. Unaware of this the Chinese sent him back. Some time after the mental safeguards were put in and before brainwashing he managed an assisted escape and fled his homeland.
Had he been left alone the safeguards would have prevented him from ever accessing his abilities. He’d have been free and harmless. Instead the Chinese sent him back and the North Korean brain butchers finished the job.
We’d been on the cusp of this for awhile; the arms race merging with the human race. They put me together piecemeal with implants, injections, and a swarm of nanobots.
I lost my fatigue response and the physical need for sleep went with it. This allowed a constant stream of extended training and conditioning sessions. I can run pretty fast and I have pretty impressive strength, but my real selling feature is extreme resilience. We’re talking dropped from a plane over North Korea without a parachute resilience. That’s how they sent me in for Kang-Dae.
The poor bastard’s eyes looked empty, like he hadn’t slept a moment in his entire life. His fire took most of my clothes and all of my hair trying to stop me. It hurt like hell but verified I was fireproof. I also learned that I could tear a man’s arms off if properly motivated.
Getting out of the country was the hard part. Still, you can cover a lot of ground when you don’t get tired, don’t have to stop to sleep. Some of the jobs have relied on that particular side effect of my modifications.
I’ve tried sleeping. I can feel it gnawing away in there, at the edges. I need to shut down but my eyes won’t stay closed. If I relax for too long my muscles twitch, urging my body to move. I keep trying.
I’ve completed all the training they can throw at me. For the most part I’m left alone; alternating between bloody field work and laying in a darkened room telling myself that this time I’ll sleep.
They’ve tried replicating my results. It hasn’t taken. They must have missed documenting some variable the first time around. More’s the pity. The formula they hit on seems pretty good on the surface. None of my targets have measured up yet at least.
The last job was an internal problem. Their inability to recreate their successes with me has done little to hamper their other programs. This was their first successful test, relatively speaking, with super speed. He flipped a switch. They’re not sure why but something broke and they sent me in.
I gave him a free shot. In the time it took me to react he got in about forty. He threw me around pretty good but that was the extent of it. I let him go at me for a couple minutes with a vain hope of perhaps.
I think he mistook my apathy for confusion or fear. He got too close and I grabbed him by the throat. I found myself looking into another pair of tired eyes and snapped his neck. Another job well done. Another disappointment.
Maybe the next one.
