Free Short Stories 2013

by Baen Books

  "If it's trying its damnest to eat you? Yes!" Jane cried. "And if we just lure it out of the river right now, without some way to keep that from happening, we will have no other option. Until we know which of the three rivers this thing is in now, even setting up a safe perch to film from is going to be a waste of time. We don't have time for this. I can get people to keep an eye out for it and call us if it shows up."

  She had Hal too well trained to argue with her. Nigel looked to Taggart instead of her.

  "I think Jane's right," Taggart said. "Our end goal is to get enough great footage that we can get an open pass to Elfhome. We haven't shot anything but water today."

  Nigel nodded reluctantly. "Okay, let's do the saurus tomorrow."

  #

  It came as no surprise that her nightmares had gotten worse. Between Tinker's kidnapping, the lack of any progress at finding her, and quiet sounds of someone else in her house, she had no hope. At three a.m., she slipped out of her room and padded down to the kitchen to find something to drown them out.

  There was light on in the kitchen. It was in an odd place. She paused to feel Chesty standing beside her, not growling, before swinging the door the rest of the way open.

  Taggart was holding her refrigerator's door open, studying its contents, wearing only his low pj pants.

  "Do you not have shirts to sleep in?"

  "Actually, no." He eyed her milk as if there was something strange about it.

  "It's fresh."

  "It's just – I've never seen milk in a glass bottle before."

  "I get it from a dairy down the road. It's easier for them to recycle glass bottles than plastic."

  "It's like I've gone back in time." He poured the milk into her smallest saucepot. "Do you have any sugar and cocoa I can put into this?" As she handed him her sugar bowl, he explained his lack of shirts. "Network wanted us in L.A. first before coming to Pittsburgh to do pre-production work. Design the logo, hire on the people that will be doing the graphics for titles and end credits. Mostly what we spent the month on, though, was having it drummed into us that we were going to film monsters. The bigger and more fantastic, the better. Then we flew to New York to drive to Pittsburgh – and half my luggage didn't make it."

  "Ouch."

  "Luckily it was just my backup boots, some extra pair of jeans, and," he motioned to his bare chest. "The shirt I sleep in."

  "We do have clothing stores." Jane put the cocoa on the counter beside the saucepot. "We can get you something tomorrow evening after filming."

  "Thanks. Sorry about waking you up." Then reluctantly he added. "I have bad dreams. If I go back to sleep, it's like I just hit pause when I woke up."

  "Been there, doing that. You didn't wake me. I've got my own little demons."

  He did his eyebrow quirk, which was stunningly sexy since he had the most striking eyes she'd ever seen.

  She found him a teaspoon to keep from blushing. She grew up with a small testosterone-driven army, but never had to deal with man alone in her kitchen, half-naked, in the middle of the night. At least, not one that wasn't related to her.

  "I have five younger brothers." She stumbled for an explanation.

  "Hal said something like that."

  "Yes, well, what Hal hasn't mentioned is that I had a baby sister too. When I was sixteen, she was six."

  He realized the implication and his face filled with sorrow for her. With the look, all the raw grief that been building up the last few days seemed to expand to fill her. Feeling like her heart was about to explode with the anguish, she found herself talking.

  "My dad died when I was twelve. My brothers were ten, eight, six, four and two." Not that she had their ages memorized for that year alone; it had always been simple to figure out. "I'm not sure what the hell happened in June, but every other March, regular as clockwork, my parents had a baby."

  Taggart nodded while mixing sugar, cocoa and a splash of milk into a dark paste. The fact that he continued to make hot cocoa, albeit in a very odd manner, made it easier to spill out her grief.

  "I'd always spent a lot of time watching my brothers, but after my father died, it was like I became the Dad. Mom had just had Boo and needed to be the Mommy, so I took care of everything Dad used to do. Cut the grass. Fix things that got broke. Teach my brothers how to run and climb and shoot and fight. I didn't really mind it. It was just how things were. I didn't know anything else."

  He stirred the paste in the hot milk. She realized that he'd made enough for two people. She got out two coffee mugs and set them down on the counter. As if she opened up floodgates, the words kept spilling out. There was something comforting about the dim kitchen, the quiet of the night. For once, not being alone was a blessing.

  "My brothers. It was like they had a death wish, and every time I turned around, I had to fish them out of the river or cut them down from a strangle vine. Boo was smart. She was curious as a cat but she'd always get someone else to do stuff for her. She'd be there in the thick of things but she was never the one stuck and screaming."

  He poured out the steaming cocoa, dividing it neatly, and then turned to wash out the saucepot.

  "The summer that I was sixteen, our freezer quit working. Here in Pittsburgh, you have to have a freezer, especially with eight people in the family. You shoot a deer. You catch a shark. You butcher a cow. You can smoke some of the meat, but the rest, you have to freeze it or it will go bad. The thing is, they're harder than hell to get. There's one little appliance store down in the Strip District, just a hole in the wall. Every Shutdown they get one truck full of things – washers, dryers, refrigerators, hot water heaters -- and there are only one or two freezers per month. You can put money down and order one advance and wait two months. Or you can be the first person in the store as they unload the truck. Mom didn't want to be out the money and have to wait, so she decided that we go into the Strip District the night before Shutdown and just camp there until a truck came in and we'd get one. You know all the 'could have' and 'should have.' She still tears herself apart blaming herself. She could have ordered the freezer. She could have left us all at home. She should have left Boo with my aunt. It just eats at her. It eats at all of us."

  "What happened?"

  Jane lifted her shoulders. "We don't know. One minute Boo was there, with us, and then the next, she was gone. It’s a crazy time. All the delivery trucks fight to get into the Strip District, unload and get out of the city before they get stranded on Elfhome."

  "Been there. Done that."

  "The police thought at first that maybe she went to the river's edge. We told them that she wouldn't do that. She was too smart. Then they thought maybe she tried to get home. We'd come all piled in my mom's pickup but there were other times we'd came in on the lightrail. We were all sick of being stuck in the Strip District, waiting for the truck to be unloaded. But she was about the only one of us kids that wasn't whining about going home. It was the first time she'd been in town for Shutdown. She’d never seen so many trucks at once. Whole families carrying everything into their stores fast they could. She was fascinated.

  "And then, the police suggested that maybe she'd gotten into one of the empty trucks. At least, that's what they said in front of me and my brothers. And then they took my mom quietly aside and said what they really meant. That one of the truckers took her."

  "That got the EIA involved and they stopped all the trucks that had deliveries in the Strip District that hadn't crossed the border already and searched them."

  "You know when they first disappear, you're angry. You told them just to be good, stay close, and not get into trouble and now they're nowhere in sight. You look and you look and you look – just so angry you could hurt someone -- and you're rehearsing what you're going to say when you finally figure out where the hell they are. Then slowly this fear takes root, and starts to grow, and you try so hard to hold onto that anger, because it's so much safer than the fear.

  "But it leaks away and all there is left is
fear. And then that goes away too, because you know, whatever horrible thing that was going to happen has happened. It's over. It's done. It can't be undone. And you walk around feeling like a big hollow drum with no idea how you're supposed to feel."

  #

  The hot cocoa was the best she'd ever tasted, hinting that Taggart had spent many sleepless nights perfecting it. Her dreams for the rest of the night were unsettling in a totally different way and featured a wild man with chocolate-colored eyes.

  #

  The tip from Beef4u had specified the old Mt. Lebanon golf course. Jane hadn't been back into the area for years, so she had expected to find it overrun with possibly dangerous brush. She was surprised when they arrived in the early gray of dawn, to find the grass looking regulation height.

  "What the hell?" She pulled to a stop to peer out over the lush rolling green. She was driving her SUV with Nigel following in the CBM production truck. "Don't tell me someone actually still plays golf."

  "Wouldn't surprise me." Hal had volunteered to ride with Nigel. Based on the chatter over the voice-activated headsets, they had bonded over a mutual love of flora and fauna.

  Taggart was in her passenger seat, smelling good enough to eat. She never met anyone that could be so distracting without saying anything. He was wholly focused on filming.

  Something moved in the fog. She tensed. They couldn't be so lucky as to spot the saurus immediately – could they? The answer was no, as the forms resolved into cows grazing lazily.

  She swore softly. "Shit. 'Beef4u.' A damn farmer sent in the tip."

  Taggart laughed, his voice dipping down almost to bass.

  Jane snorted out in disgust. "Okay, the good news is spotting the saurus just got a hell of a lot easier. Plus we've got a ton of free bait."

  "The bad news?" Taggart asked.

  "Smart boy. Cookie for knowing that there's bad news." Jane eased her SUV across the worn divided line to drive along the berm. "Bad news, Pittsburgh beef cows are the meanest son-of-a-bitches."

  "So, we have to dodge several tons of pissed off sirloin while filming one hungry dinosaur?"

  "Welcome to Pittsburgh." She drove slowly along the converted golf course. "Keep an eye out for oncoming traffic."

  "What are you looking for?"

  "Tracks."

  The farmer had gone to town on fencing, putting up eight strands of barbwire to create a six-foot wall around the golf course. Jane suspected that Beef4U was trying to keep animals out as well as in. Considering that wargs were a growing problem in the area, she couldn't blame him for trying.

  "There!"

  She automatically jerked back to her side of the road and then realized that Taggart hadn't spotted an oncoming car but a monster. He had his camera already trained on the massive creature poised to attack.

  "Oh! That's where that went," Jane said.

  Truth was sinking in on Taggart. "That's – not real -- is it?"

  "No, that's a proper T-Rex. Saurus are more velociraptor in shape, although just about the same size. I think that's from a miniature golf course that was like ten miles away. Yes, this is Sunset's stuff. There's Skull Mountain and Batman. I wonder where they found the pirate ship. Oh, god, they've got the dragon den statue from Sandcastle!"

  "Pittsburghers love castles."

  "It's an abandoned water park down on the Mon River. They couldn't keep the water fairies out. And yes, we do, it's part of the American dream." She was going to drive past but realized that Nigel had pulled into the parking lot. "What are they doing?"

  "Oh, we can't pass this up." Taggart motioned for her to go back. "It's far too surreal. This is what we came to film. The real Pittsburgh."

  "This makes us look like redneck nutcases." Jane backed up so she could pull in behind the production truck. Nigel and Hal were already out, gesturing at all the statues visible from the parking lot.

  "We've got to get this, Jane!" Nigel cried as she and Taggart climbed out of her SUV.

  "All right." She agreed before Hal could chime in. They only had a vague tip on the saurus and so far they hadn't seen any sign of one. Certainly the cows seemed unconcerned and the fence hadn't been breached. Most likely the putt-putt was as safe as any other place in Pittsburgh; which was to say, only somewhat harmless. "Set up so the T-Rex is in frame and you can do basic biology comparisons." She turned to Taggart. "Keep an eye and ear open. I'll be in the truck."

  She would have liked to put Chesty on guard duty, but he would only guard her. Elfhounds were very loyal to a very small set of people and she'd never been able to get him to include Hal into that unit.

  Because she and Hal killed their show's subjects every week, often with fire, they used the production truck to make sure they had good footage before fully engaging the creature. After the actual fighting started, whatever they got, they got. They'd also learned that while a smoking body afterwards rarely made great material, it was worse to come back the next day and discover that scavengers had found the corpse.

  She flicked on screens and put in an earpiece to link her with Taggart and Nigel. "I'm set."

  Taggart had a perfect frame already. Nigel waited until Hal got a light reflector in place.

  Nigel stood a moment profile, looking up at the T-Rex looming over him and then turned toward the camera. "No more than this statue can capture the true essence of a dinosaur can our cameras convey the primal silence of this place. We're standing in the heart of the displaced zone on a Saturday morning. At one time two million people lived in this area. A sunny day, like today, would have heralded thousands of lawn mowers growling to life. Cars coming and going to one of a dozen malls. And across the street, people would have been lining up to tee off. Cows graze there now. We haven't seen another car for half an hour. All there is to be heard is the rustle of the wind through the trees."

  Hopefully just wind, Jane thought.

  "This miniature golf place stands almost abandoned. Someone is keeping the grass trimmed. There's clubs and a bucket of golf balls and a sign that reads 'play at your own risk.' Someone has added 'be careful of the water trap on third hole.' This place stands as a monument to what is quintessential Pittsburgh. The people of this city adapt and go on."

  Jane was impressed by how much information Nigel had managed to gather since they’d arrived. She hadn’t noticed until that moment, but he was right: someone was maintaining the place. Judging by the torn earth around the dragon statue, the owners of the park had only recently looted the abandoned water park in Homestead and dragged it halfway across town. Apparently, there was enough interest in the putt-putt to improve it but not make it a viable business.

  "This fellow is Earth's Tyrannosaurus, or T-Rex. He is a theropod dinosaur, which means he's bipedal, or walks on two legs. As we see here, his eye-sockets faced forwards, giving him good binocular vision. But most importantly, he's been extinct for sixty-five million years. We are here today seeking something very much alive. The Elfhome saurus.

  "This distant cousin is very much like this fellow here. It grows to a massive forty feet length from nose to tip of tail, and fourteen feet high at the hips." Nigel raised his hand and demonstrated that if his knuckles were the dinosaur's hips that the saurus would be considerably taller if it straightened up from its running stance. "This effectively doubles its reach. And unlike the T-Rex, the Elfhome saurus has very functional forelegs that can reach and grasp."

  Nigel lifted his right hand slightly.

  "Done?" Taggart asked.

  "Done," Nigel said. "For now. I could talk for hours about the saurus but it would only be worth it if we catch one on film."

  "How was that Jane?" Taggart asked.

  She checked lighting and sound. "It was perfect."

  "I want to do the water trap." Nigel pointed past Mario and the mushroom castle of the second hole. The moat of the castle extended out into a small pond with stepping-stones out to an island that acted as the tee for the third hole. The cup lay somewhere on the shore beyond the l
arger than life Batman standing guard on the flat roof of an old fashion police station.

  "What do you think is in there?" Taggart asked.

  "The mind boggles." Jane eyed the murky green water through the monitors. "The most dangerous things are in the river, not ponds."

  Hal pulled out his grab stick and gave the water an experimental stir.

  "Hal, out of the water."

  "I'm being careful."

  "Just stay out of the water and keep back from the water's edge."

  "We could just throw a stick of dynamite in," Hal said. "Just to be sure."

  "We don't have any liability waivers signed, so no dynamite."

  Taggart gave a bark of surprised laughter. He was getting hauntingly beautiful shots at amazing speed. The nearly abandoned golf course in the early dawn light seemed luminous and yet achingly sad through his lens.

  "Hush you," Jane grumbled, feeling mildly jealous. She wanted to be outside, filming too, but time didn't allow for that.

  The men carefully picked their way around the water trap to where rooftop Batman stoically guarded the cup.

  Nigel reached up to pat the statue's foot. "The stories you could tell."

  And hopefully they wouldn't add any new interesting ones today.

  Nigel leaned against the miniature police station and grinned with boyish glee. "It's really starting to hit home. I'm on Elfhome. I was eight when Pittsburgh suddenly vanished from Earth. It was like Christmas. The first Startup was in the middle of the night and we woke to a changed world. I remember how all the television channels for days played endless footage of the iron forest that sprang up without warning where the city once stood. How completely and totally dumbfounded the world was on how to explain what had happened. And after the first few hours of the wall of trees, the stories of the strange and wondrous animals rampaging in the suburbs that remained on Earth. For me the most amazing was the two saurus that made it to the Monroeville Mall parking lot..."

  Jane saw a movement in the background. Something big and black was charging down the hill behind the Batman statue. "Cow!"

  "What?" Nigel asked as Hal took off running, reflector held over his head.