by Unknown
Remmy’s hunger pains had settled into the hum of anticipation.
What you were meant to do.
When the man returned to the bottom of the stairs, Remmy padded soundlessly behind him, arms encircling his torso, teeth sinking into his neck. The man cried out, then relaxed. Remmy suckled, pulling at the wound, worrying it wider with his tongue and lips. His tongue searched, wiggled deeper and the taste sent a beautiful orgasmic wave through him.
Soaring through the night. Feeling as large as the heavens. The wind whistling in the ears.
The sky turns orange. The world freezes. The air shatters as if made of glass.
Darkness and suffocation. Hunger so limitless, it is a line that stretches past the horizon.
The wall that separated the voice inside of Remmy burst apart in a torrent of blood. Electrical impulses jumped across the incisions in his brain. Old, dead tissue sparked with electrons, reborn with the infusion of blood. Bridges were reconnected, pathways rebuilt. Like the building pressure of a train through a tunnel, the emotions amplified: Hatred for the doctors and what they did to him. The hatred made him clench the man tightly, his embrace snapping bones like kindling. The man’s only defense was a pitiful gasp.
Remmy sucked and drank until the body was a dry husk, the heart sputtering then dying.
The corpse slid from his arms and Remmy shivered with the aftershocks. Through this haze of swirling emotion, he heard the door unlatch and smelled cigarette smoke drifting through the crack. He made his way up the stairs letting his fingers trail along the rail as if experiencing touch for the first time. The whorls and imperfections in the wood sent shivers along his spine.
He opened the door.
Molly sat at the table, good hand holding a smoldering cigarette. His vision focused on her heat. He smelled her fear and it tingled in his groin. And yet, he felt something new: gratitude. Molly had done this. For him.
“Molly. Dear Molly,” he said.
“Are you leaving now?”
“Do you want me to?”
“You know I don’t.” She stubbed out her half-finished cigarette.
“Tell me what you want,” he said.
He saw her pulse quicken and his senses sharpened. Crystal, another layer of magnification. If he focused, he could hear the earthworms tunneling, the piercing sonar of the bats outside — but none of it mattered except for the thrumming of her heart.
“You’re playing games with me now?” she asked.
“Isn’t that what all of this has been? A game?”
“Not a game.”
He moved so swiftly that she startled when his hands touched her neck, flowing down her shirt. His breath was cold and goose bumps flowered on her skin. Remmy wondered if it would excite him more if she resisted. Not with Molly.
She exposed her neck for him. Her breath fluttered when his mouth touched her throat, her good hand clenched in a fist. “Molly,” he whispered, then punctured her with a swift stroke. Blood squirted to the back of his mouth, flowed over his tongue and he swallowed. His veins filled and his heart pumped as he gorged on her life.
The perfect softness of holding hands.
Klaxons. A crush of people, so many they push him down, trample him as he gasps for breath. She cannot reach him. The air distorts from heat, smells of chlorine. His hand is empty as she takes it. Bitterness, like a mouthful of diesel fuel that she cannot spit out.
He heard a truck with an over-loaded suspension bouncing down the laneway. Headlights shone through the window, Remmy staring into their brilliance, Molly holding the back of his head in a lover’s embrace, fingers entwined in his hair.
“You know what you have to do, don’t you, Remmy?” she whispered.
He licked the slowing wound and pulled away. Molly sat with half-lidded eyes and he crouched to her level. He stroked her hair.
“I know what I will do.”
“Thank you.”
He kissed her on the mouth, delicately painting her lips red with blood. He heard the mob outside: car doors closing, muffled laughter, the clink of metal on metal.
“You’ve come this far…” she said, her hand pulling him toward her.
He returned to her throat, worried the bite wider and sucked until her heart gave a final, weak pulse. When he pulled back, her eyes were closed and he marveled how beautiful she looked. He wanted to stay with her but the voices were outside the door now.
You know what you have to do.
“Yes.”
Remmy left through the back door and stood in the shadows away from the brilliance of the headlights. His gaze shifted from person to person, at the way they laughed nervously, at the way they looked over their shoulders waiting for the inevitable attack. Despite their weapons and numbers, they were afraid. Terrified.
And so they should be. Molly had shown him the truth: he didn’t have to fear the dark. They did.
* * * * *
Ryan T. McFadden is an award-winning fantasy/SF author in London, Ontario. He has several short stories published and his novella, Deus Ex Machina was part of the Aurora-winning Women of the Apocalypse, published by Absolute XPress. He is busy working on his next project in the always popular Neo-Noir Supernatural Crime Thriller category. The story “Homo Sanguinus” (rough translation: Bloody Man) began from two desires. The first, to never say the word ‘vampire’ (an idea given to him by Kevin Nunn), and the second, to place the vampire protagonist as the oppressed rather than the oppressor.
Out with the Old
By William Meikle
From the journal of John Sharpe — April 3rd 2062
Although we had manned the barricade all winter, this was the first day I felt tense and on edge, the first day I really believed that danger might be imminent. There was something in the air that spoke of a possibility of spring. Not that anyone would notice much. We’ve been under the same grey cloud for two years and more now, and there hasn’t been a sign of any sun in all that time. All of us hope that this year things will be different, that this year will see us turn the corner. None speak of it though, for that might jinx the thing entirely.
There was also something else with us this morning besides hope. Bill Davis actually cracked a smile when the light changed from a murky gray to a slightly less murky gray, and Harper Lodge sang “The Spring’s a Coming”, so off-key that we all laughed. The jollity had a forced note to it, though. You don’t come through a winter like this one without it affecting you. All of us have been touched by standing too close to cold death. We’ve had thirty-five bodies to burn out back of Mifflin’s store, and I know I’m not the only one who’s laid awake at night thinking about their dead eyes.
I haven’t been doing much writing. Not doing much of anything besides dying slowly and watching this old town fade away.
We’re down to fifty-five souls, sinking fast. We won’t make it through another winter. We all know it, but nobody will speak of it, a huge elephant in every room. Actually, an elephant wouldn’t be a bad thing. At least we could eat it. The last of the deer meat went this week, and we’ll be lucky to see any more. Grass doesn’t grow real well under this cloud, and the wild animals aren’t any better off than we are.
There’s not been fuel for automobiles or tractors for three months now, and nobody’s volunteering for a trip to Edmonton — the last four we sent never came back. I’m guessing it’s the same all over.
Weren’t any one thing that caused the world to go to shit so fast … just a lot of things at once: war, warming, pollution, and too many folks chasing too little water. That, and the weather deciding to throw everything at us all at once for five years in a row, and we’re left where we are now — no infrastructure, no food, and damned little hope.
A fine start to spring!
The morning’s brief flirtation with a lift in the gloom soon faded as the clouds fell down from the Rockies, slate gray and flat like a giant tombstone just over our heads, getting ever darker as the sun went behind the mountains. I was ju
st starting to look forward to the thin gruel that would pass for supper when Harper cocked his rifle.
“We got company,” he said.
Suddenly the day felt a lot colder.
The three of us stood at the barricade watching a vehicle close in on us along the highway, the headlights too bright in the gathering dark.
I was thinking how unlucky I am. I’d been there on the road the last time too, when the three bikers came along shooting and hollering. I’d stood alongside Frank Brookes when he took a shot in the chest and died gurgling at my feet as I pumped round after round into the bikers, and I’d helped burn the bodies later that day.
I never want to smell flesh burning like that again.
Maybe I’m afraid I might start salivating. Ha! Morbid humor.
Anyway, there’s not much chance of a repeat of that gunfight. We’re down to twelve rounds between the lot of us, and we really should be keeping them for hunting game this coming summer. They might be all that stand between us and starvation.
All those thoughts were going through my mind as the vehicle approached. Whoever was driving, they didn’t seem to be in a hurry. It was a pickup truck, sleek, black and cleaner than anything I’d seen for years now. It could have come straight from a showroom. It came to a stop ten yards from the barricade and when the driver cut the engine I heard warm metal ping as it cooled rapidly. The door of the pickup opened.
“Let’s see your hands,” Harper shouted, his voice high and whiny with fear. “Right fucking now!”
A pair of pale hands rose above the door. There was no sign of a weapon. Bill Davis covered me as I walked up to the pick-up, knees like jelly and a stone brick in the pit of my stomach.
As I approached, the door opened further and a tall man stepped out. He showed me his palms, which looked almost white in the gathering gloom. When he looked into my eyes my stomach turned to ice, and I was sore tempted to just drill him there and then.
It was something in those eyes that did it. They reminded me of a time before the darkness, and a bar fight in Boston with a man who didn’t care how hard you hit him, a man who just liked to fight. This newcomer gave off the same aura, and that was trouble I didn’t want to know.
He smiled, and that put paid to any idea I might have of shooting him.
“Hello,” he said softly. “As you can see, I’m not armed. I’m here with a proposition.”
Harper was having none of it. “You can take your proposition and shove it where the sun don’t shine.”
He’d come up to my side and aimed his shotgun straight at the newcomer’s nose. If the stranger was intimidated, he didn’t show it. Ignoring Harper’s gun completely, he stepped back and patted the tailgate of the pickup.
“You’ll want to see what’s in here,” he said.
And he was right. He drew back a tarp and showed us what he had under there. When I stepped forward I did indeed start to salivate.
The stranger … he said his name is Josh Prentice … brought us enough tinned food, liquor and smokes to see us through a month at least.
We’ve just had a town meeting. He’s promised to share it all, if we let him stay.
Mine was the only dissenting vote.
From the journal of John Sharpe — June 12th 2062
I still haven’t taken to Prentice, but I can’t deny he’s made a difference. Three times now he’s gone out in that big pickup of his, and three times he’s come back with supplies — less each time, but still enough to keep this town on a borderline subsistence.
It’s better than dying, that’s for sure.
And he’s certainly been putting in the work up at the Avery place. Nobody’s lived in that big house for three years and more — it’s too far out of town and too high up the slope in winter for any of us townsfolk to care for it. But Prentice says he’s doing just fine. Most days we hear the sound of chainsaws and hammers echoing down the valley. Bill Davis is the only one who’s been up to see. He took the deeds of the house to be signed.
“Just ‘cause the world’s gone to fuck don’t mean we shouldn’t keep the law here in town,” he said. When he came back down he was quiet, and it took a few beers to loosen his tongue. Even then, he refused to be drawn, beyond a single phrase that he would repeat when asked what he’d seen: “He’s building a fort up there.”
Prentice has sure made himself useful. Apart from bringing in food, he’s also done his shift on the barricades, volunteering for night duty where nobody but the stupid would stand. Most nights there’s just me and him there. He doesn’t speak much, but his eyes scan the horizon continuously, like an eagle watching for a rabbit.
Haven’t learned much about him. Says he came out of Vancouver, and it was bad. I can tell that much from his eyes and the way his hands tremble when he speaks. But he won’t give away specifics, and when pushed his eyes get that hard look that reminds me never to get him riled.
He said something that’s got me thinking, though: “We need to go back to the old ways.”
When I pointed out to him that maybe it was the old ways that got us into this mess in the first place, he said something under his voice that I almost didn’t catch. “‘Old’ depends on how far back you want to go.”
From the journal of John Sharpe — August 17th 2062
Fall’s going to be here soon. The sense of trepidation in the town is palpable. If it weren’t for Prentice I’m sure we’d have a few suicides on our hands by now. He’s stopped taking the pickup to Edmonton. He says there’s nothing left there to scavenge but rats, and even they’re having trouble hanging on.
That news, brought two weeks ago, hit us hard. We’d grown accustomed to the supplies he was bringing — especially the liquor and the smokes.
But meat is what we mostly crave. I can’t count the nights I lay awake listening to my stomach do impressions of thunderstorms and thinking about burgers, and sausages, and rib-eye steaks with all the fixings. While we still had some smokes I managed to keep the cravings at bay, but I figure it’s going to be another long protein-free winter.
Until Prentice made one last trip out.
Our summer hunting has yielded nothing but a pair of coneys and a maggot-ridden coyote. But the stranger — I still call him that — thought he could do better.
He called a town meeting yesterday to set out his plans. We yielded the floor to him and he stood up on the stage in the school hall and looked down at us as if he was the headmaster and we were recalcitrant pupils.
“Look at you,” he said. His voice sounded soft, but it carried across the whole hall even though it was several years since we’ve had power for a microphone. “There you sit, preparing for death, when you should be preparing for life. You don’t know how lucky you are.”
A few snorts of derision rang through the hall, but nobody spoke up. It seems I wasn’t the only one who’d recognized the look in Prentice’s eye.
“You’re all worried about the coming winter? And well you should be, if it is anything like the one I spent last year. But I can ameliorate the situation. I can bring you what you need.”
Bill Davis joined me in snorting at that one, but everyone else seemed rapt.
“What can you do that we can’t do for ourselves?” Bill shouted.
I was sitting close to the front so I caught the angry glance Prentice shot Bill’s way. All everybody else noticed was the harsh laugh.
“The world has changed. I am adapting,” Prentice said. “How many of you can say that?”
He let us chew on that for a while before continuing. He repeated what he’d said earlier.
“I can bring you what you need. I can guarantee survival. In return I will ask you for something. Maybe not this week, this month or even this year. But the time will come when I will ask. And I will expect it to be given … with no questions.”
He left us to mull that over for a while too, but there was very little discussion. Everybody had already benefitted from his trips to the city. Everybody knew he was
a man of his word.
“Besides,” Marion Larkin said, “we ain’t got much to give him, no matter what he asks for. What have we got to lose?”
The vote was near unanimous again. Bill Davis stood with me in the nay saying, but no one else was listening. We got Prentice back in and agreed to his terms. He left looking like the cat that got the canary.
He came back tonight with three large moose in the back of the pickup. I was the only one who got a good look at them before Taylor Bishop’s truck hauled them away for carving up, but they sure didn’t look like they’d been shot to me.
They looked like something had torn their throats open. Damned near took their heads off.
We have enough meat to see us through months to come.
But at what price?
From the journal of John Sharpe — October 10th 2062
Heavy snow today. Winter is almost here.
God help us.
From the journal of John Sharpe — November 18th 2062
The men who came along the road last night were desperate. They had to be to brave the passes on foot in this weather.
Damned near caught us by surprise, too. We’d given up expecting any more marauders, not this late in the year. But hunger drove them out of wherever they’d been holed up, and set them straight at us. We must have looked like a target.
I counted twenty of them in the pack that tried to sneak around our defences. Mangy beasts they looked, and as disease ridden as the coyote I shot in the summer. But their guns were filled with ammo, and that put them one up on us even before we started in to the fighting.
Harper Lodge took one in the chest that’s looking to put paid to him before long, and I felt a bullet graze my temple. We used up the six rounds we had left in the first assault, putting down three of the attackers. Then we were down to hand to hand fighting at the barricade.
The one that threw himself at me was more animal than man, a snarling beast with ropy drool hanging from his chops. He had a knife in his left hand and his right was little more than a mass of pulpy tissue, grey and full of pus. I smashed my rifle butt against his jaw and three teeth flew in a bloody spray. It hardly slowed him.