Long Eyes and Other Stories

by Jeff Carlson

  It was the best that Diana could do. The cleanest.

  The shepherd rushed toward her again, slavering, and she fired the last bullet up through her own mouth.

  END

  Afterword

  No, the heroine isn't actually my wife. Yes, the real Diana has a self-possessed beauty and intellect, but we've never had dogs, nor marital trouble, and the real Diana is a marketing analyst, not a vet-turned-detective. We've never lived in a major urban environment, either, which is why the character Diana seems both intrigued and repelled the endless concrete of her unnamed city. To me, cities feel like a bizarre torture to inflict on yourself. I don't care if it's easier to find a good Thai restaurant. I get claustrophobic.

  Like "Pattern Masters," "Caninus" was written during my horror phase. This was a few years before "Twilight," but vampires have always been popular, and I thought a vampire dog was a nice twist — not a werewolf, but vampirism in animals.

  Animals wouldn't develop an elaborate, immortal society, developing their secret clans and secret rules. They'd operate on instinct. That struck me as cleaner than the sometimes indulgent, long-winded books about human vampires and their lovers, slaves, wannabes, hunters, and rivals. This story was meant to be a short, sharp shock.

  It also came from my fascination with the human-pet relationship. As a boy, I grew up with dogs and cats, but now as a husband and a father myself, we're too busy earning a living, raising our family, and maintaining our home to give enough attention to a pet.

  My impression is most of my neighbors are too busy, too. Energy costs more than in my parents' time, which means everything else costs more, too — food, clothes, utilities, everything. People work harder now than ever, and yet we're only household on our street that doesn't have a dog. Because I work at home, I often listen to those dogs barking in lonely, neglected misery for hours on end. The fact is dogs are pack animals. It's wrong to leave your friend alone in a fenced yard or a garage or your house while you're at work all day. They need stimulation, and they will create it themselves if necessary. Hence the noise. The dog is staving off madness.

  I'm sure I'll get in trouble for saying so, but here it is:

  Too many people talk a good game about how they love their pets like members of the family, but dogs should be treated like children. They need constant attention. If you can't provide it, don't own a dog. Of course they're cute and fun, but it's absolutely not cool to treat an animal like a toy you can take out when you want, then ignore when you're busy. That's selfish, even cruel, and the cranky writer next door doesn't appreciate the barking, either.

  "Caninus" emerged from a long love of monster movies mixed with curiosity and frustration. Why bother to have a dog you won't care for? They cost money. They fill your yard with crap... or the street, if you're inconsiderate enough to let your dogs run loose because you don't want to clean up after them... and the trailheads near the open space where we live are encrusted with the mummified poop of ten thousand dogs excited to be free at last. They've become an incredibly artificial niche species. I don't get it. So just for fun, while we're on the subject, I've included a bit of free-verse called "Eighth-Acre Blues" that appeared in a college publication called Kokopelli's Seed.

  EIGHTH-ACRE BLUES

  I am

  held here

  and these wood walls

  this patch of green

  and single tree

  is all

  I've ever known

  save for faded

  memories of

  sisters and brothers

  who shared

  a mother's warmth

  Here

  I am well-fed

  but

  each meal

  is the same

  as the last

  When they let me

  out

  on my chain

  it is I who leads

  the guards

  They yank us

  back

  by the chokers

  we wear

  when another captive

  and I try to

  exchange greetings

  of silent scent

  I like it outside

  but

  beyond my confines

  I often hear

  the false cry

  of an Evil

  It masquerades

  as one of us

  Its mechanical howl

  controls me

  Frenzied

  I bark back

  but always

  the horror fades

  and leaves us

  prisoners in peace

  Sometimes

  at night

  we howl

  too

  Afterword

  I hope it's obvious that the idea here is of a small, captive, almost-sentient race scattered across an environment they barely understand. Sometimes I wonder what pets think of suburbia. Sometimes I wonder how they'd react if they gained more intelligence as in "Planet of the Apes" or the clunky, ancient thriller "Day of the Animals."

  A lot of pets are well-loved and have every basic need provided for them. It's a life of luxury. And I'm very, very glad I'm not one of them.

  EXIT

  There were rats in the soufflé again — whole ones, this time. Stevens wasn't being subtle anymore. Fine. These babies were impossible to miss, unlike the little clawed feet sprinkled into last night's dinner.

  Last night I'd told Dr. Hallwag that he had twenty-four hours. NORAD refused to give us any more time.

  We were down to roughly one hundred and eighty minutes now, with nothing to do but fill our neglected bellies. My squad and I had been gofers, muscle and security for the scientific staff of this subterranean compound; my duties were through; what remained of the equipment had been gone for and muscled into place, and security was only a rude joke.

  I poked at a leathery tail jutting up from the middle of my plate (Stevens wasn't being subtle; he was sculpting) and stifled an exhausted giggle. It was a bad idea to get started. I might not stop.

  Beside me at the cafeteria table, Corporal Watters set her fork down with a sudden, precise movement.

  Good, I thought, she sees them, too.

  "Lieutenant," she said, "Stevens obviously has it or he would have quit this crap. I hoped he was... just making some kind of statement."

  "It's your turn."

  Watters shook her head. "I took care of Riggs."

  "But I did Carrington and Rudowski. I'm one ahead."

  She frowned at me, surveyed her plate, then rose and strode toward the kitchen.

  "Get me a sandwich while you're in there," I said.

  Watters must have been wound tighter than I thought. Her first shot was bad. I heard Stevens scream before she shot him again.

  #

  The virus — when perfected — had been intended to be a merciful means of conducting war, like spraying enemy lands with an incapacitating form of LSD and then simply walking in. When the fevers and hallucinations wore off, their troops and leaders would find themselves defeated unconditionally. Bloodlessly.

  We would never know which scientist released the proto-forms of the virus, or even for sure if it had been an accident. Did it matter? I had watched the security camera back-tapes as I transmitted them to NORAD, but saw nothing definite. C Block was closed off now, sealed the instant that the sniffers belatedly detected the leak, and I had been too short-handed to send a detail in there merely to search for clues that might not exist.

  The situation had been lousy from the start. Most of the people capable of solving the problem, and most of our supplies, had been lost in the chaos that ensued before C Block fell forever silent. The staff trapped behind the automatic gates all went violently insane as the proto-viruses made their subconscious fears as real to them as their skin.

  Over the past two days, most of my small command had also succumbed. Hazmat suits were no protection. One proto-virus had spread much faster than anyone could have gue
ssed and was now incubating within us all.

  There was no exit, no salvation, unless Dr. Hallwag pulled off a miracle. Even then NORAD might incinerate us with a baby nuke just the same. How could they be certain we weren't pretending to have conquered the virus out of desperation?

  Three lives meant little weighed against the possibility of loosing the virus upon the American populace — and the world.

  #

  Hallwag didn't look up from his microscope when I stepped into his makeshift laboratory, eating a turkey on white. It wasn’t much of a last meal, but it didn’t have any mice in it. I'd checked four times.

  He appeared as neat as ever, even wore a red tie under his lab coat like a flower at the base of his neck.

  "Doc, you hungry? Take five. Maybe a short rest'll help."

  He didn't respond. A centrifuge spun on the counter beside a rack of tissue samples. Some of that flesh was mine. I rubbed at the gauze wrapped around my forearm.

  "Doc!" I sprayed crumbs.

  He leaned back from the microscope and I saw that his face was a pale mask. The neatness of his clothing was inadvertent.

  "Dinner?" I said, but he shook his head and returned to the microscope.

  #

  Less than an hour left, the alarms I'd set at the exit went off. Watters and I drew our sidearms and ran.

  Hallwag screamed as we stalked toward him. Who knows what he saw — who or what we were in his eyes. "No chance!" he shrieked. "No chance!"

  Watters shot him cold.

  Hallwag had managed to open three of the locks. One more correct code-keying and the elevator would have powered up, the gates opened. How he'd deciphered my codes I couldn't guess. Maybe he was just that much smarter than me.

  Watters and I studied the closed gate for a long time. I almost reached out to the keypad. But the virus would leave with us.

  She said, "How about desert, lieutenant? My treat."

  We walked back into the compound.

  END

  Afterword

  This "short short" is the first piece of writing for which I was ever paid. The second was a spaceships-and-dopplegängers story called "Fellow Travelers" that I didn't include in this collection because, reading it now, it makes me wince.

  "Travelers" had a good, spooky idea, but at the time I hadn't learned enough craft to execute a larger story. "Exit" avoids that pitfall by holding itself to three characters, three scenes, and one simple if frightening concept.

  "Exit" was also among the last entries in a tradition perpetrated by the Moscow Moffia, a writers' group centered around Moscow, Idaho, where I lived for a year and a half after leaving college. They ran writing challenges and published anthologies of "Rat Tales" — short stories whose conceit was that each story must start with the same sly, opening line, "There were rats in the soufflé again." After that, you were on your own.

  In its heyday, the Moffia and other writers included in the "Rat Tales" anthologies included such giants as Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Katheryn Rusch, Kevin J. Anderson, and John Brunner. Most of them had moved to higher circles by the time I arrived on-scene, but one of the prime movers behind the group was writer, editor, and superfan Jon Gustafson.

  Jon died several years ago, but he was among my first friends in sci fi. I'd never heard of science fiction conventions. Jon worked as one of the prime movers behind MosCon, which drew people from all over the Northwest for twenty-two years in a row.

  I fell in with Jon and his crazy friends not long after settling in town, entered that year's writing challenge, won first place, and was paid $5 to have "Exit" included in the MosCon XVI program guide book. I was also awarded a free membership to the con.

  Next year, he paid me $60 for "Fellow Travelers" and ran it in the guide book, too.

  Maybe that doesn't sound like much to call home about, but MosCon's guests of honor that year and the next included legends like Roger Zelazny, Gregory Benford, and Phil Folgio. Even better, in a small twist of fate, "Exit" ran alongside a reprint of a story by Doc E.E. Smith, and "Fellow Travelers" appeared with an exclusive, advance excerpt of a novel called The Tides of Tiber written by Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes. The publisher, Tor, granted Jon the right to run this excerpt purely based on his reputation in the field. I was included in the same pages. That was heady stuff for a young, would-be writer, and I've always been grateful to Jon for his encouragement.

  Since then, "Exit" has been translated into five languages worldwide, reprinted twice in English (not including this collection), and appeared twice as podcasts.

  Not bad for five hundred words and a tasty breakfast.

  MONSTERS

  His name doesn't matter. He had a job in which he invested forty-odd hours of his life each week, a car that was only two years old, and a small apartment with a view from the kitchen window of an undeveloped hillside where the sun came up. Because of this, he usually breakfasted standing at the kitchen sink whereas he ate most of his dinners in front of his girlfriend's TV. His days passed with little adventure or romance — a speeding ticket here, oral sex on the hall carpet there; hardly the stuff of legends — and he was content.

  As he pushed through the theater's heavy door with his shoulder, protecting an armload of popcorn and soda, some kid in the front rows yelped like a puppy. He barely noticed. His girlfriend jammed a finger into his ribs as she brushed past, even though it was her snacks that he'd drop, and he said, "This whole place is designed for us to sit dead-center. The picture, the sound system..."

  She flashed her smile and shook her head. "Some tall dork always plunks down in front of me."

  "No one's even here." He didn't much care what his vantage point would be for this "sweeping Victorian epic," yet by appearing to give in now he was more likely to win a later dispute. He'd already racked up big points just by agreeing to see a movie completely lacking gunfire or killer asteroids.

  In front, the kid who'd yelped was on her feet, rubbing her butt and talking in a squeal. The woman beside her said two short syllables in an embarrassed tone. The kid shook her head. The woman growled something that sounded like okay fine and they moved over a couple seats. That was all.

  On the far left side of the theater, he sat down next to his girlfriend. Something hard and very thin lanced into his thigh and he stumbled up, careful not to spill his Coke. "Ow. Man!"

  "What?"

  He thought she'd jabbed him — payback for his earlier sermon on the top ten most boring aspects of chick flicks, but his wound really hurt. Her idea of fun was to pinch his nostrils shut when he overslept or to deflate his bowling scores. And her puzzled grin became a frown when she saw his expression.

  "Look," he said.

  The tiny steel shaft was almost the same color as the maroon upholstery, but specks of bright metal showed through a dry sticky coating of red-black.

  His stomach lurched as he realized the crust was blood, some instinctual need to purge himself. He would remember that feeling later on restless nights, in muted hospital rooms, during slow dead hopeless hours.

  There were other moments that he could resurrect in his mind, heartbeats in which his body reacted before he could think. Most came playing roller hockey — saves, scores, falls that should have resulted in broken bones but because of a last second lunge or judo-like roll had cost him only bruises. Others were more alien and random — a sense of knowing a strange woman that went beyond physical attraction — shadows of fear — an aggressive predatory urge when bumped on a crowded sidewalk.

  Instinct, primal emotion, seemed in many ways quicker and more powerful than the intellect.

  "Man. Oh, man." He rubbed at his flank exactly as the kid in the front row had done. The dim lights went out. Previews started as he investigated his seat.

  In the dark blue flickering glow of an ocean storm, he found a note taped to the underside. It was only three letters long.

  HIV.

  In the brown gloom of a courtroom scene, he shouted at the audience. Three peopl
e hollered back at him to shut up. He tried again, panicking, but his girlfriend tugged on his sleeve. She didn't care about them.

  #

  He went straight to the emergency room. Two hours passed before the insurance papers were complete and a doctor was available. The desk nurse suggested that he leave and visit his primary care physician the next day.

  Sweating, certain that he could feel the disease scratching in his veins, he pleaded that money didn't matter, he wanted to see someone now, right now, please.

  His girlfriend sat as close as the hard plastic chairs would allow, holding his hand, while a parade of strangers kept them waiting — a guy his own age whose shattered forearm seemed to have an extra wrist, two children with dog bites — none of whom honestly seemed in more danger than himself.

  "It was a prank," his girlfriend said.

  They stared at the tile floor.

  Later, she whispered, "Doctors can kill it with drugs on the first day, I think."

  He lifted his head to kiss her in a sudden delirium of fear and need. She leaned back, avoiding him. In the day to come, he would understand her reaction as an important lesson — that he was ultimately alone in this no matter how many times his parents and friends promised to be there for him.

  The thick dirty flood of hate passed quickly, but for a moment he trembled with energy. He almost stood up and shouted. He almost hit her. Then he slumped back in his seat, already defeated, already dead, pushing her hand away and crossing both arms across his chest.

  Her eyes were horrified. "I'm sorry," she said.

  "You can't get it kissing somebody," he said.

  "I'm sorry."

  #

  When the ER doctor told him HIV infections cannot be detected for six months, disbelief clogged his head. For most of a week he managed to hope, numbly, that nothing had happened. Then police technicians announced that the needles did indeed carry a virulent strain. Every professional he visited put the odds at ninety-plus percent that he was blood positive because his puncture wound was rough and deep.