by David Boop
The Morlocks worked like fiends. There were not a dozen of them, as Oona had thought. There were scores of them. Perhaps hundreds. Milling, white as maggots, all over their machines, running their factory, preparing for a war that could not be won by anyone but them.
Unless there was some way to stop them.
He felt like a fool for even thinking that. It was a thought born of hubris; like the challenge of a mouse preparing to wage war in a house of cats.
No. Not like that.
It was like his ancestors must have thought when they first heard the crack of a musket and saw the bad medicine of a bullet kill a red man beyond the range of bowshot. Like the Comanche and Apache and Cheyenne and the other nations felt when they rode in packs toward a line of cavalry who stood behind rows of nine-pounder cannons. Such a thought was perhaps noble—or would be in a song, if anyone was left to write songs—but it was nothing when measured against the Morlocks and their fleet and their monstrous factory. He might as well have stood on a New England rock and hurled stones at the Mayflower.
Oona seemed to deflate beside him, and he knew that her own bravado was being ground beneath the wheels of reality. She looked down at the two pistols she had and shook her head, clearly measuring their meager power against the might of the Morlock army. She bowed her head and then sagged back and sat hard on the ground. The two porcelain pistols fell from her fingers, and she buried her face in her hands.
“I’m sorry, Father,” she said in a voice so broken it tore at Red’s heart. “I tried…Please forgive me, but I tried.”
She wept as the machines thundered and the smoke curled like storm clouds against the ceiling of the cave. Red felt so bad for her that a fiery rage burned in his chest. He wished he had the power of the demons his mother prayed to. He wanted to reach up and pull the ceiling down and bury these monsters and their factory in ten million tons of rock.
But he was only a man, with a man’s strength, and this was the end of the world.
Then…
He looked up again. At the machines. At the glowing hot metal of the train engines as they struggled to match the insatiable demands of the Morlocks. He looked at the steam shooting from the vents. Urgent, angry.
He looked down at Oona, this small, strong, brave, time-lost woman. He looked at her strange hair and clothes. So alien to him. He looked at her weapons, discarded on the ground.
And Red MacGill smiled.
It was not a nice smile. Although he could not see it, he felt it, and when he’d smiled like that before, his enemies had recoiled. Maybe Comanche demons glared out through his eyes when he smiled like that. Or maybe the Celtic gods of his father’s people. Or, perhaps it was simply a level of madness entirely his own.
He bent and picked up one of the pistols.
“Tell me,” he said with an odd gentleness in his voice, “how does this work?”
Oona shook her head and turned away. “What does it matter? We can kill ten, twenty, a hundred of them, but they can bring back whole armies. We’ve lost.”
“How does it work?”
“Why bother?” she snapped. “We can’t kill them all.”
Red touched her chin with one finger and turned her head. She resisted at first, but then she allowed it. He didn’t turn her to face him—and not because he did not want her to see that smile on his face—he turned her toward the laboring machines. Her brow furrowed in confusion.
“How does this gun work?” he asked again.
The confusion melted like wax and ran from her face, leaving her brow clear. Then she did look at him, and her smile was every bit as wild as his own; every bit as insane.
She picked up the other pistol. “You turn this dial. Lowest setting will kill a man.”
“And the highest setting?”
Her answer was a demon’s grin.
They both turned the dials all the way up.
“It will bring down the whole mountain,” she said.
“Yes,” said Red.
“We’ll die, too.”
“Sure,” he said, “but not alone.”
Oona got to her feet. She stood on her toes to reach his mouth with hers, and kissed him.
“You’re a good man, Red MacGill,” she said, meaning it in a different way than before. “My father would have liked you.”
“Your father would be proud of you,” said Red.
They raised their guns.
A Morlock saw them and shouted a warning. A dozen of them pulled their own pistols.
Oona took Red’s free hand in hers.
They fired.
– 11 –
It was a sultry night on Coronado Bay in San Diego.
The man with the burned face sat on a chair that was tilted back on two legs. His booted feet were on the rail of the small cabin, a glass of beer resting on his belly. There was music on the wind. Spanish guitar. Laughter, too.
Beside him was a woman with bandages on both arms and shadows in her eyes.
They watched the moon’s reflection on the ocean, a river of silver light that stretched from the beach to the horizon.
The man’s face itched where the burn scabs were healing. The woman told him not to pick at it. He did anyway. He drank some of the beer.
They said very little. There was time for talk, for sharing of her world and his. This wasn’t that time. In the three months since they crawled out of the smoking mouth of hell, they had talked and talked. But on nights like this they often lapsed into silence. The world turned on its slow axis and spun through the blackness of space. On the face of the world, children played and babies cried, people loved and hated and fought and died and were born. Nations strove one against the other, masterpiece paintings were wrought, books were written, dances were danced. It was not a calm world, and often not a nice one, but maybe people would learn to get along. Maybe.
There was time for that.
There was plenty of time.
Red drank his beer. Oona stared up at the stars. Sometimes they smiled at each other.
There would be plenty of time for everything.
About the Contributors
About the Editor
David Boop is a Denver-based speculative fiction author and editor. He’s also an award-winning essayist, and screenwriter. Before turning to fiction, David worked as a DJ, film critic, journalist, and actor. As Editor-in-Chief at IntraDenver.net, David’s team was on the ground at Columbine making them the first internet-only newspaper to cover such an event. That year, they won an award for excellence from the Colorado Press Association for their design and coverage.
David’s debut novel, the sci-fi/noir She Murdered Me with Science, returned to print in 2017 from WordFire Press. (Simultaneously, he self-published a prequel novella, A Whisper to a Scheme.) His second novel, The Soul Changers, is a serialized Victorian horror novel set in Pinnacle Entertainment’s world of Rippers Resurrected.
David edited the bestselling weird Western anthology, Straight Outta Tombstone, for Baen, and has followed with Straight Outta Deadwood and Straight Outta Dodge City. David is prolific in short fiction with many short stories and two short films to his credit. Additionally, he does a flash-fiction mystery series on Gumshoereview.com called The Trace Walker Temporary Mysteries (the first collection is available now). He’s published across several genres including media tie-ins for Predator (nominated for the 2018 Scribe Award), The Green Hornet, The Black Bat and Veronica Mars.
David works in game design, as well. He’s written for the Savage Worlds RPG for their Flash Gordon and Deadlands: Noir titles. Currently, he’s relaunching a classic RPG, Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic, as a Savage Worlds title, complete with tie-in novel.
His third go at a “real” degree landed him Summa Cum Laude in the Creative Writing program at UC-Denver. He also is part-time temp worker and believer. His hobbies include film noir, anime, the Blues and Mayan History. You can find out more at Davidboop.com, Facebook.com/dboop.updates or Twitter @david_
boop.
About the Authors
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of forty-five novels and four hundred shorter works, including stories, essays, reviews, film and TV scripts, introductions and magazine articles.
His work has been made into films, Bubba Hotep and Cold in July, as well as the acclaimed Sundance TV show, Hap and Leonard. He has also had works adapted to Masters of Horror on Showtime, and wrote scripts for Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series. He scripted a special Jonah Hex animated short, as well as the animated Batman film, Son of Batman. He has also written scripts for John Irvin, John Wells, and Ridley Scott, as well as the TV show based on Hap and Leonard.
His works have been optioned for film multiple times, and many continue to be under option at the moment.
He has received numerous recognitions for his work. Among them the Edgar, for his crime novel The Bottoms, the Spur, for his historical Western Paradise Sky, as well as ten Bram Stokers for his horror works. He has also received the Grandmaster Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association. He has been recognized for his contributions to comics with the Inkpot Life Achievement Award, and has received the British Fantasy Award, and has had two New York Times Notable Books. He has been honored with the Italian Grinzane Cavour Prize, the Sugar Pulp prize for fiction, and the Raymond Chandler Lifetime Achievement Award. The Edge of Dark Water was listed by Booklist as an Editor’s Choice, and the American Library Association chose The Thicket for Adult Books for Young Adults. Library Journal voted The Thicket as one of the Best Historical Novels of the Year.
He has also received an American Mystery Award, the Horror Critics Award, and the Shot in the Dark International Crime Writer’s Award. He was recognized for his contributions to the legacy of Edgar Rice Burroughs with the Golden Lion Award. He is a member of the Texas Institute Of Literature and has been inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame and is Writer in Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University.
His work has also been nominated multiple times for the World Fantasy Award, and numerous Bram Stoker Awards, the Macavity Award, as well as the Dashiell Hammett Award, and others.
He has been inducted into the International Martial Arts Hall of Fame, as well as the United States Martial Arts Hall of Fame and is the founder of the Shen Chuan martial arts system.
His books and stories have been translated into a number of languages.
He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas, with his wife, Karen, as well as a pit bull and a cranky cat.
Mercedes Lackey was born in Chicago, Illinois, on June 24, 1950. The very next day, the Korean War was declared. It is hoped that there is no connection between the two events.
In 1985 her first book was published. In 1990 she met artist Larry Dixon at a small science fiction convention in Meridian, Mississippi, on a television interview organized by the convention.
They moved to their current home, the “second weirdest house in Oklahoma” in 1992. She has many pet parrots and “the house is never quiet.” She has over 135 books in print, with four being published in 2019 alone, and some of her foreign editions can be found in Russian, German, Czech, Polish, French, Italian, Turkish, and Japanese.
Mercedes Lackey has written and published 135 books in many series, including the Secret World Chronicles, Hunter, Valdemar, Elemental Masters, SERRAted Edge, Elvenbane, and Obsidian Mountain series from Hyperion, DAW, Baen, Tor and many others.
James Van Pelt is a full-time writer in western Colorado. His work has appeared in many science fiction and fantasy magazines and anthologies. He’s been a finalist for a Nebula Award and been reprinted in many year’s best collections. His first Young Adult novel, Pandora’s Gun, was released from Fairwood Press in August of 2015. His latest collection, The Experience Arcade and Other Stories was released at the World Fantasy Convention in 2017. James blogs at www.jamesvanpelt.com and he can be found on Facebook.
Ava Morgan writes steampunk and fantasy. In a distant parallel universe, she studied to be a lawyer and once worked in the legal field behind a desk. However, one trip to a sci-fi convention years ago cemented her desire to pursue her true calling: writing stories that were just a little bit different. She still works behind a desk. However, at the very least, she gets to deal with unique settings and diverse, quirky characters. Maybe being a writer isn’t that different from her former profession after all…
Ava’s bestselling steampunk adventure series Curiosity Chronicles is still going strong with the recent release of The Scarborough Affair. When she’s not writing, Ava can be found bicycling with her husband under a Texas sunset, raising two rambunctious children, and wearing vintage fashion. Visit her site at www.avamorgan.com for the latest updates.
Harry Turtledove earned a PhD in Byzantine history after flunking out of Caltech at the end of his freshman year. (Want fries with that?) When he couldn’t land a teaching job, he scammed the beginnings of an sf/f-writing career into a tech-writing job, which he kept for eleven and a half years. After quitting it to write full time, he has made a poor but none too honest living turning out tales of alternate history, other sf, fantasy (much of it historically based), and, when he can get away with it, historical fiction. He has won a Hugo, lost two more, lost a couple of Nebulas, and pilfered three Sidewise Awards and a Dragon Award for alternate history. His latest novel is Through Darkest Europe, an alternate history; forthcoming is a new historical, Salamis.
He is married to fellow writer and Broadway maven Laura Frankos. They have three daughters and two granddaughters, and live in a not-quite-big-enough house with three overprivileged cats. If you like, he can annoy you on Twitter @HNTurtledove. He tries not to take life too seriously.
Samantha Lee Howe began her professional writing career in 2007 and has been working as a freelance writer for small, medium and large publishers, predominately writing horror and fantasy under the pen name Sam Stone. This body of work includes thirteen novels, five novellas, three collections, over forty short stories, an audio drama and a Doctor Who spin-off drama that went to DVD.
Samantha’s breakaway debut thriller, The Stranger in Our Bed, was bought by HarperCollins and will be released under their One More Chapter imprint on 14 February 2020 (digital) and 16 April 2020 (paperback).
A former high school English and Drama teacher, Samantha has a BA (Hons) in English and Writing for Performance, an MA in Creative Writing and a PGCE in English.
Samantha lives in Lincolnshire with her husband, David, and their two cats, Leeloo and Skye. She is the proud mother of a lovely daughter called Linzi.
Eytan Kollin has written the successful and award-winning Unincorporated series with his brother, Dani. The first book in the series, The Unincorporated Man won the Prometheus Award (with two of the three other books in the series nominated, as well). Eytan and Dani have also published a book of short stories called Grim Tales of the Brothers Kollin through WordFire Press. Baen will publish Caller of Lightning, a Benjamin Franklin historical fantasy that Eytan coauthored with Peter J. Wacks, in June 2020. He has also sold the rights for his first solo novel, Balancers, to Automatic Publishing; release date to be determined.
The writing of “The Adventures of Rabbi Shlomo Jones and the Half-Baked Kid” started as a simple conversation about how almost any cultural background could find its way into the Wild West. Thus, the story of a golem was suggested. Eytan wrote another Shlomo Jones adventure with his father, Rabbi Gilbert Kollin, a man whose knowledge of Judaism and the Wild West proved of great benefit to both the first and second stories.
Julie Frost grew up an Army brat, traveling the globe. She thought she might settle down after she finished school, but then married a pilot and moved six times in seven years. She’s finally put down roots in Utah with her family—a herd of guinea pigs, three humans, a tripod calico cat, and a “kitten” who thinks she’s a warrior princess—and a collection of anteaters and Oaxacan carvings, some of which intersect. She enjoys birding and nature photogr
aphy, which also intersect. Utilizing her degree in biology, she writes werewolf fiction while completely ignoring the physics of a protagonist who triples in mass. Her short fiction has appeared in too many venues to count, including Writers of the Future 32 and The Monster Hunter Files. Her werewolf private eye novel series, Pack Dynamics, is published by WordFire Press. She whines about writing, a lot, at agilebrit.livejournal.com.
Kim May has always been a storyteller—just ask her mother. On second thought don’t. She knows too much. Kim writes fantasy, sci-fi, thrillers, YA, historical fiction, steampunk, and a bit of poetry because she collects genres like a crazy cat lady collects strays.
Kim’s debut novel, The Moonflower, was a 2017 Whitney Award nominee. She also won first place in the Named Lands Poetry Contest with a haiku. Kim’s short stories can be found in The Monster Hunter Files, Eclipse Phase: After the Fall, Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel, and several issues of Fiction River.
Kim lives in Oregon where she works at an independent bookstore and watches a lot of anime. She’s a retired stage actor and has a penchant for fast cars, high heels, and loose screws. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and at ninjakeyboard.blogspot.com.