21st Century Dead

by Christopher Golden

  “We’re trying to keep you people alive. But if you wake up my kids, the navy’s gonna have to keep me from kicking your ass off this island.”

  The guy’s wife pulled him away, and Tom shuffled into his room. The guy was just afraid, like anyone, but he was asking the wrong guy for answers.

  He eased the heavy, unfamiliar door open slowly, fearful of making a sound. Molly was sound asleep, but Geoff sat bolt upright on his cot. His hands lay in his lap like he was still holding his PSP, but they were empty. He just sat there breathing heavily with his eyes open and unseeing. Tom remembered shamefully those moments when Geoff was throwing a tantrum or something, and Tom had reacted by losing his temper. When Geoff was suddenly shocked out of his whining by the unwarranted volume of Tom’s response, he looked just like that. He looked like he was falling inside his own head. He looked like he’d been like that for hours.

  “Geoff?”

  The boy didn’t respond. Tom went over and touched his son’s clammy forehead. Geoff jolted in his arms. He’d been asleep with his eyes open.

  “Daddy, what happened to my backpack? I need my art stuff—”

  “It’s in the car. We’ll go back for it.…” When? Tomorrow? Would all this go back to normal before the weekend? “Or we’ll find you something here you can draw on, tomorrow. Right now, you should go to sleep.”

  “I was asleep, Dad.” Putting a healthy dose of offended dignity into his bleary voice, Geoff turned over and slapped an extra pillow on top of his head, just like his dad on a Sunday morning.

  Tom lay down and, after washing down two of Kristin’s sleeping pills, he did the same.

  Even at home, without a pillow over his head, he couldn’t get to sleep. The slightest sound would jerk him alert and he’d start thinking, and then he might as well get up. Geoff had inherited his father’s nerves.

  But they were safe, here. Safe with the navy. He could sleep.

  So Tom didn’t hear the door open and shut, or anything else, until he woke up six hours later.

  And he never saw his son again.

  VIII.

  SOFTHEARTED MODERN FAMILY MAN that he was, Tom was strictly old school when it came to tears. He wasn’t raised to respect or excuse them. Where he came from, they were still a mark of weakness.

  He wiped them off before he got out of his chair, and noticed the smell, so thick he was swimming in it. Death.

  And burning.

  Flipping the safety off his pistol, he grabbed his doorknob. It wasn’t hot, but his hand slipped on it, slick with tears and sweat. Cursing, he threw it open and followed his gun into the hall.

  The corridor was dark for a split second before the motion detectors activated the lights, but it was long enough for him to sense that he wasn’t alone. There was no smoke in the air, no fire, but the stench of scorched flesh—sickeningly, repulsively sweet on the disinfected breeze—made him gag.

  When the lights came on, he jumped backward into the wall.

  Someone had tagged the wall. In red letters six feet high that marched down the hall—from the elevators to cover the door opposite his room—a huge dialogue balloon said: YOU NEED ME MORE THAN I NEED YOU.

  The dialogue balloon’s long, slender tail pointed to a service worker standing against the wall opposite Molly’s room. A spent spray-paint can was clutched in one gloved claw.

  It didn’t move as Tom cautiously circled behind it to put his gun to its skull. Stray wisps of noxious smoke leaked out of seams in the service worker’s green neoprene cowl.

  Pulling the trigger would wake up everyone on the floor, and there was no point in executing it now. Whoever had hacked the worker’s Z-chip must’ve programmed it to fry the worker’s brain when it was done with its little act of viral vandalism.

  Tom shook himself to get hold of his rage and the fear that pulsed underneath it. Not everyone in the City was as grateful for the safety and luxury they’d carved out of the chaos. Not everybody wanted to go along to get along.

  And if they could take control of workers, they weren’t just vandals. They were terrorists.

  He called downstairs and chewed out the manager, who promised to send a maintenance crew up ASAP. “You’re not the only ones who got hit, sir,” he said with a groan as Tom hung up.

  Tom tucked his gun into his bathrobe pocket and went to his daughter’s door.

  All was quiet in 4039. He peeked under the door and saw no light. She was now either thinking or dreaming. Either way, the crying had stopped.

  But there were whimpers up and down the corridor. Little audible ghosts of orphaned sorrow. Not all of them children.

  He sat by her door, staring down the broken worker until he heard her snoring, a half hour later. The big red slogan on the wall ran through his mind, chasing its tail.

  And all the while, he listened for the ding of the elevator.

  Imagining the dead, pouring in.

  He imagined his son clumsily rounding the bend in a natty rubber jumpsuit, now marinated and gravid with shit like the boy the Jeep had plucked from the sewer. Forehead ripe for crushing.

  And he asked himself, If Geoff did come back … could I do that thing?

  And the answer was, horribly, yes.

  Because something had emptied them. Emptied them all. All the lights and noise and creature comforts couldn’t drown out the hollowness at the heart of everything and everyone in the City.

  Making the dead much more like the living, and the living much more like the dead.

  Violating all our barricades, no matter how well crafted.

  Overwhelming all the comforts of home, no matter how painstakingly reconstructed, maintained, and controlled.

  “I love you,” Tom said to the door of 4039, and the daughter he hoped he’d never have to kill, or live to see repurposed, a year or twenty down the road.

  Waiting for the uncontrolled billions that still hungered outside their tiny, frail, brave oasis. Their light in the darkness. Their lone beacon. Their home.

  Listening for the ding that—this night—never came.

  “I love you,” he said.

  GHOST DOG & PUP

  STAY

  Thomas E. Sniegoski

  NOW

  Murphy missed the smell of the air after rain, the multiple scents carried on a cool breeze as he closed his eyes and turned his snout to the wind. He missed the feeling of the moist ground cool against his belly after a hot summer’s day, and the refreshing taste of rainwater as it overflowed his water dish.

  But more than anything, Murphy missed his boy, the musky smell of him, damp with sweat after a long walk in the woods, the feel of his young but strong hands as they stroked his fur, the salty taste of his boy’s skin as Murphy licked his face.

  The dog was lying in the grass at the back of the wooded yard that had been part of his home for nearly eleven seasons, watching his boy as he knelt before a mound of earth that had just begun to sprout new grass. The boy was crying as he placed a worn tennis ball in the center of the patch of recently disturbed soil.

  So many tears, Murphy thought. So much sadness.

  He wanted to go to his boy and press himself close, nuzzling his hand to tell him that everything would be all right, but the boy would not have felt him. The boy would not even have known that Murphy was there.

  “Mitchell,” the mother’s voice called out, and the boy lifted his damp face toward the sound, wiping away the tears.

  “Yeah, Ma?”

  “Supper’s just about ready. Why don’t you come in and wash up.”

  The boy turned his reddened eyes back to the small grave. “I’ve got to go,” he said in a voice filled with emotion. “I’ll try to come back after I eat.” He placed his hand on the disturbed ground beside the ball, as if waiting for some sort of reply.

  Murphy stood and barked, as he had every time since … but in his current state, he could not make himself heard, no matter how loud his voice. The boy could not hear him.

  The boy rose f
rom his knees, brushing away the dirt that clung there, and reluctantly headed for the house as his mother called again.

  “Mitchell!”

  “Coming!” he replied, chancing a quick look back over his shoulder.

  Murphy’s thick yellow tail wagged reflexively as the boy turned. He was going to follow Mitchell, running beside him as they had done countless times before, but something distracted him.

  Something in the deep woods beyond the yard, stronger now than it had been on that fateful day when the great storm had come.

  The day Murphy had lost his life.

  * * *

  Two Weeks Ago

  Irene was coming, and everyone was talking about her.

  At first Murphy had been excited by the idea of a visitor, but he had soon come to understand that Irene was a storm, growing stronger by the minute as it headed for his home. That morning, as he went out to do his business, he could smell it in the air. It wasn’t like any other storm he had experienced: this one smelled different. This one smelled of danger.

  The parents had not wanted to go to work that day, but they had to—the mother was a nurse and the father worked for the electric company. Murphy had listened from his place on the kitchen floor, beside his boy’s chair, while the mother and father repeatedly told their boy to stay inside, and ensured that the neighbors would check in on him. “I am ten years old, y’know,” Mitchell had grumbled as he shoveled another spoonful of cereal into his mouth, milk spilling down the front of his pajama top.

  Murphy could understand the parents’ concern, but the boy wasn’t to be alone. Murphy was there. He would watch over his boy and protect him, even from a storm named Irene.

  The morning went along as summer mornings did, Murphy by his boy’s side as Mitchell played video games and watched TV. But the dog could feel Irene approaching, and it made him anxious. He could see it from the windows as the sky grew dark and the trees bent with the gusting winds. Sometimes the rain fell in what seemed like sheets of water, but he had to be brave for his boy.

  Murphy had been dozing, flat on his side in the middle of the living-room floor, when he was awakened by the sudden realization that Mitchell was no longer in the room. The dog lifted his head, sniffing the air for anything out of the ordinary, but could find nothing. He had risen to go in search of his boy, when Mitchell came bounding down the stairs, fully clothed, and headed straight for the kitchen.

  Curious, Murphy trotted along beside his charge, then sat and eyed his boy warily as he took his hooded, yellow rain jacket from a hook inside the cellar door.

  “What are you looking at?” Mitchell asked, pulling on the slicker and snapping it up. “I’m going outside.”

  Murphy continued to fix the boy in his unblinking stare, trying to convey his displeasure.

  “You comin’, or are you stayin’ inside?” the boy asked, pulling open the back door to a tremendous gust of warm, moist air.

  The dog recoiled from the rush of wind, and the boy laughed.

  “It’s really blowing,” he said as he stepped outside and turned to pull the door closed. “Comin’?” he asked, looking at Murphy.

  The dog had no choice: he had to protect his boy. He bolted across the kitchen floor and out the door and Mitchell shut it tightly behind them.

  It was late morning, but the sky was as black as night, as if the sun, fearing for its safety, had gone into hiding. Murphy didn’t care for the way it felt outside, the hackles of yellow fur around his thick neck rising to show his disapproval. The rain was falling even heavier than before, and the dog was tempted to run back up onto the porch, but then he saw the boy, his arms spread to catch the gusts of wind that propelled him farther and farther back through the yard.

  Murphy let out a bark and ran across the saturated grass to join him.

  “Isn’t this great?” Mitchell yelled over the yowling wind and the hiss of torrential rain. Powerful gusts caused the trees to bend precariously, while pushing the boy toward the wooded area at the back of the yard.

  Murphy’s barks fell upon ears deafened by the storm as he tried to call his boy back. Squinting against the whipping wind and water, Murphy watched as the boy leaped into the air and was carried a great distance closer to the woods by another powerful rush of air. Mitchell laughed uproariously as Murphy crouched low to the ground while the surge of wind tried to toss him away as well. The boy could be a stubborn one, sometimes unaware that he had gone too far, until it was too late.

  And suddenly it was.

  Murphy watched as the boy leaped again and landed on his hands and knees, the winds immediately trying to haul him up from the forest floor to throw him even deeper into the woods.

  There was that feeling again, that one of danger, and it seemed as though Mitchell was finally aware of it, too.

  “Think we might need to go back,” he yelled, fighting to stand.

  The dog couldn’t have agreed more, already turning toward the house.

  Mitchell took a step in the same direction, but was blown violently backward by a blast of wind even more powerful than the ones before. The sound of the boy’s cries as he tumbled along the ground drove the dog to action.

  Murphy dived forward, capturing the boy’s pant leg in his mouth, and planted his feet firmly, fighting to stop Mitchell’s progress. It was enough for the boy to turn onto his belly and grab a protruding root to keep from being carried farther from the house.

  Releasing Mitchell’s pants, Murphy began to bark furiously, urging the boy to follow him. He could see the fear in his eyes as the boy struggled to his feet.

  And then it all came to a sudden, frightening stop, as if it were somehow another day, and there was no such thing as a storm called Irene. There were no howling winds, or driving rain. It was as quiet and still as the early morning.

  Mitchell stood, frozen in place, eyes wide with wonder as he looked about. Murphy began to growl, then lunged at the boy, barking wildly. Can’t you feel it? Don’t you know this isn’t right? He grabbed the rubbery sleeve of his boy’s raincoat and tugged. It was almost as if the boy had been held in some sort of trance, and snapped out of it only as the dog pulled at him.

  “Hey,” Mitchell said as he yanked his coat from the dog’s mouth and rubbed at the sleeve. “Knock it off.”

  The quiet in the woods was deafening, but as the boy took his first step toward the house, Irene descended upon them again. It was as if she had been waiting, like a cat in a tree ready to pounce upon its unsuspecting prey. She dropped on them, twice as furious as she was before.

  The rain fell so hard that it obscured Murphy’s sight, and he lost track of Mitchell. Panicked, he ran through the growing puddles, so much water falling from the sky that there was no place for it to go. The wind was like a living thing, screaming and thrashing as it showed how angry it could be. Murphy finally found his boy moving in the wrong direction. He raced to his side, herding him back toward the house.

  This time the boy paid attention, grabbing hold of the dog’s collar as Murphy began to lead him. But the storm had other ideas. It had more to show them.

  The trees started to fall, as if some great beast, invisible in the storm, were snapping them in half and tossing them down, the ground trembling as their weight landed upon it.

  His boy was crying out in fear now, but Murphy continued to lead them out, hearing attuned to the sounds of falling trees, trying to steer them clear of every crack, snap, and eventual thud. Mitchell’s grip remained tight upon his collar, and Murphy prayed to the Great Old Dog, hoping He would help get them both to safety.

  But Irene did not yet care to dismiss them.

  There came the most horrible of sounds, a deafening groan like no other, and as they spun around, disoriented by the elemental and sensory onslaught, the ground beneath their feet seemed to open up.

  Murphy reared away from the disturbance, and although Mitchell cried out, his grip upon the dog’s collar remained firm. The two stood frozen in the storm, trying to get
their bearings, and that was when Murphy saw a large, old tree toppled directly in front of them, the muddy earth no longer able to hold its tremendous weight.

  Murphy backed away, and felt his boy’s hand suddenly absent from his collar. He glanced at the great hole near the base of the ancient tree, and saw Mitchell squatting at the edge, looking down into the crater created by the mighty tree’s fall.

  “What is it?” the boy hollered over the raging storm, as Murphy came to stand beside him.

  But the dog had no answer as he peered down at the strange, flat blue stone at the bottom of the hole.

  * * *

  Now

  The sound of his boy yelling inside the house drew Murphy from the painful memories. He trotted across the yard, and passed through the heavy wooden back door into the kitchen. His concern was always for the boy, and he at once located him, standing rigidly in the center of the room, his face splotchy with rage. Murphy was moving toward him when he heard the whimper.

  The dog stopped, his blocky, yellow head whipping around toward the frightened sound. The father was standing in front of the stove, the mother by his side, and in his arms he was holding a tiny puppy.

  “Mitchell, please,” the father began, but the boy would not hear it.

  “No, I don’t want him; I don’t want another dog—ever!”

  “Honey, we thought with you being so sad since Murphy…”

  “You’re trying to make me forget him, and I won’t,” Mitchell screamed, stomping his foot on the floor. “I won’t ever forget him and I don’t want some other stupid dog to try and make me.”

  The boy was crying, his entire body quivering with rage and sadness. Murphy was compelled to go to him, to reassure him as he had countless times before, but it was all for naught, for he could do nothing now.

  “Couldn’t you give him a chance?” the father asked, holding the trembling puppy out to the child.

  “No!” Mitchell screamed all the louder, his hands clenched in fists at his sides as he unleashed his anger. The stained-glass panels in the kitchen cabinets suddenly cracked, followed by the shattering of a vase of freshly cut roses that had been placed in the center of the table.