Dark Tomorrows, Second Edition
Page 23
Did you see?
"That felt good," Rawles whispered. "Do it again."
Come for me and you will have all you like, of all you like.
"I'm serious. Do that again."
I owe you nothing, Rawles. I must be in your debt before you make demands.
"Damn it. And what do you want me to do?"
Come down below. I will guide you to me.
"You know what that radiation will do to me?"
I can heal all wounds.
"Let me think about it."
Think.
Rawles stared at the black six-inch screen in the low ceiling over his bunk. Time crawled past, his brain growing more itchy and hungry.
"Show me that vision again," Rawles whispered.
When you have performed your task.
"I can't just hop out there. It has to be approved. I have to receive a work order--"
Soon, you and I will be the authorities on this ship. We are free to create our own rules.
Rawles licked his lips and stared at the dark ceiling.
He lay in his bunk another half hour, trying to ignore the enticing voice and its extravagant promises of pleasure and power. He was almost a full shift-cycle from his next dose, and he was sweating.
Come. I must command it.
"Okay," Rawles said. "Okay, I can do this. Just have to override the maintenance log so it doesn't record."
Do as you must.
Rawles got out of bed. He dressed in denim pants and a loose cotton shirt. It felt good to leave his room without his hideous coveralls.
He rode the elevator down to the hull maintenance bay. One good thing about being a glorified janitor was full access to all areas of the ship—no matter where he went, the security system wouldn't find it very anomalous. Besides, maintaining the automated security system was his job. Technically, he shared that responsibility with DeMarco, but she didn't give it much attention. With no passengers, there wasn't much need for it.
He approached one of the spacewalkers. The machine was leaning forward on the knuckles of its long arms like a headless robotic gorilla. The spacewalkers stood eight feet high, full-body suits with extendable arms and legs that mimicked the operator's movements inside.
Rawles pulled a stepladder next to the spacewalker. He climbed up, then eased himself down into the suit. A tinted dome closed over his head, leaving him with a full range of vision.
He powered up the suit and make a few practice grabs in the air. Then he raised each leg and shook it. Everything seemed to function.
Rawles approached the airlock. Opening the outer hull would send an immediate urgent notification to whomever was at the helm. Fortunately, he knew how to disable the notification.
The outer bay doors opened, and Rawles drifted out into a vast space glowing with stars. The constellations looked alien to him. He was six thousand light years from Earth, a much greater distance than even the most outlying colonies.
He made his way beneath the Maria Augusta, past the matrix of couplings connecting it to the cargo barge below, which seemed big enough to hold an entire city.
This way.
Rawles followed the voice to an access panel on the side of the barge. He used the spacewalker's robotic hand to smash the lock and pull it open. The interior of the barge had no artificial atmosphere. It was just a warehouse of frozen death.
Debris floated out the open access panel, mostly twisted and burned lengths of metal. Half a human skull drifted past, just outside the dome protecting Rawles' head. The eye socket seemed to peer in at Rawles, and then the skull tumbled out of sight.
Rawles passed inside the dark barge. He flicked on the spacewalker's exterior lights.
The inside of the barge looked like a hellish city, with massive containers bolted into acre after acre of steel frame. Some of the containers had slipped and ruptured. Debris floated everywhere, mostly twisted metal. A vast cloud of earth had broken free somewhere and now filled the interior of the barge with a brown fog, absorbing the spacewalker's spotlight beams.
This way.
Rawles drifted forward through the fog. His lights swiveled back and forth over the rubble littering the floor.
This way.
Rawles followed the voice to a ruptured shipping container. Skeletal bones and hand floated up from the ruptured end, like a school of weird zombie fish. Rawles swam down through them, and into the ruptured container.
Inside the shipping container, skulls, skeletal limbs, and rib cages floated all around him. It was a hellish, ghostly place.
Here.
Rawles approached a steel cylinder plastered with green and yellow biohazard stickers. It was as large as a rich man's coffin.
According to the barcode on its tracking plate, it had been manufactured on Earth. Rawles wondered who had brought it so far, who had hidden it here to be shipped out with the toxic waste from the war on planet Eritrea.
He unscrewed one end of it, breaking a few locks along the way. The spacewalker had tremendous strength in its hands.
The cylinder was empty except for a black bag zipped up on the floor. A body bag. It, too, was plastered with biohazard symbols.
Take me back with you.
"Yes, master," Rawles said. He'd meant it as a joke, but somehow it didn't come out that way.
He gently pulled the body bag from the steel cylinder.
***
Back in his room, Rawles laid the body bag on the floor. It took up most of his floor space.
His heart pounded. So far, nobody had discovered what he'd done, the hundred and ninety rules and regulations he'd broken this shift. But most of the crew was asleep.
"Now what?" he asked.
Release me.
Rawles took the icy zipper tab in his hand. The cold metal seared his fingertips, but that was a momentary relief from the constant ache and need of his addiction. "Like this?" he asked.
The voice didn't answer.
Rawles pulled the zipper down, then across. He spread open the bag.
Inside lay something dark, wrapped in sheets of thick plastic. He rolled it back and forth on his floor, peeling off the sheets.
Then he backed away.
On top of the unfolded sheets lay a mummified body, little more than a skeleton with skin shriveled tight against it. The remains of rags clung to the body. Its arms were crossed over its chest like a dead pharoah's, and long splinters of rotten wood jutted from a hole at the center of the chest. Its face was a grimy skull with hollow eye sockets and unnaturally long, sharp canine teeth.
The body was wrapped in blackened chains. Here and there, Rawles could see glints of silver underneath the black.
Remove the silver.
The chains hung limply around the body, which must have decayed and shrunk since the chains were originally applied. They came off easily, and Rawles piled them in the corner.
Aaaaaaaaaah, the voice said.
"So...you good now?"
I require your blood.
"I don't know." Rawles leaned back against the wall, as far from the corpse as he could.
I have hungered for seven hundred years, beneath the foul Sardinian soil. I must feed now.
Part of Rawles' mind rebelled, insisting that he take the dead thing to the nearest airlock and pitch him into the void. But he felt powerless now, unable to make his own choices. He was weak. That's why the thing had chosen him, Rawles realized.
Cut yourself and bleed upon me.
"I don't know," Rawles mumbled. But already he was in his bathroom stall, breaking apart his shaver.
Then he stood above the corpse, chunk of broken blade in hand, and he sliced open his finger.
A fat drop of blood splattered on the corpse's left fang. It immediately faded away, like a drip of water on desert hardpan.
More. Much more.
Rawles slit open more fingers. Blood droplets rained on the skull's face.
Kneel. Bring your hand to my face.
Rawles hesita
ted. His last bit of survival instinct held him back.
I do not wish to kill you.
"That's good."
I do not wish to kill anyone. I must have renewable supplies of blood.
"Gotcha."
Come.
Rawles knelt, and he rubbed his bleeding fingers across the corpse's teeth.
A skeletal hand seized his wrist and locked its fingers around him. The dead thing drew Rawles' wrist to his teeth and bit hard. Rawles felt a fang chip the bone inside his wrist, and he howled.
The thing drank deep, and Rawles felt the strength draining from his body. He sagged against the wall, too weak to balance himself on his knees. He closed his eyes, ready to die.
But it let him go.
Rawles opened his eyes. He'd slid all the way to the floor. The thing was sitting up on its plastic sheets. Rawles watched red muscle tissue, tendons and blood vessels sprout on the old skeleton. Tatters of skin appeared on the face. It looked at Rawles with obsidian eyes.
"Morendo di fame," it groaned.
"I think I'm out," Rawles whispered.
No, you will live. You should eat. And call another to help me feed.
"Another?"
Is there no one you wish to join our little circle? No one with whom you would like to share a special bond?
Rawles pushed himself to a sitting position. His mind felt thick and slow. "Elza?"
If you like. If you would like her as my gift to you.
"I'm sick," Rawles said.
You merely suffer from lost blood. Your body will recover.
"No," Rawles said. "I'm gonna puke. My head...what about...radiation? Said you'd heal it."
I will, in time. But I must feed now.
"Dammi il sangue," the corpse croaked.
Call her now, the voice said in Rawles' head.
Rawles eased himself to a standing position, leaning his entire body weight against the wall. He eased to the door and touched the little communication screen there.
"Medical," he whispered.
After a minute, a grainy color image of Elza appeared. Her eyes were puffy with sleep. "What?"
"Emergency," Rawles whispered. "Got a big emergency. Bring plenty of blood."
Rawles slipped down to the floor.
Inside his head, he could hear the undead thing laughing.
A long night lay ahead.
About the Authors
Joel Arnold lives in Minnesota with his wife, two kids, two cats, a dog, a rat and two fish. His short stories have appeared in dozens of publications. His horror novel Northwoods Deep is available in both an electronic and print version. Check out his blog 'Beneath the Trap Door' at http://authorjoelarnold.blogspot.com to see what he's up to.
S.W. Benefiel is the author of Rebellion (DoS #2), Dormant (DoS #3) and Day of Sacrifice Vol. 1-3. The next installment, Takeover, will be released in 2011. For more information about S.W. Benefiel and her other work, please visit her website: http://staceywallacebenefiel.com
J. L. Bryan studied English literature at the University of Georgia and at Oxford, with a focus on the English Renaissance and the Romantic period. He is the author of The Paranormals series (including Jenny Pox, Tommy Nightmare, and Alexander Death), the biopunk sf novel Helix, and other works. Fairy Metal Thunder, the first book in his new Songs of Magic series, will be available October 2011. He lives in Atlanta with his wife Christina, one baby, two dogs, two cats, and some domestic plants. http://jlbryanbooks.com
Michael Crane is an indie author and scribbler of inane babble that can sometimes end up as stories. He went to Columbia College Chicago where he earned a BA in Fiction Writing and drank way too many Red Bulls. He is the author of IN DECLINE and LESSONS AND OTHER MORBID DRABBLES, and he also might've written two books while he was in high school, but he refuses to own up to them and that's why they aren't included on this page. He lives in Illinois and is always trying to work on something new, unless he's battling stupid writer's block.
Some of his favorite writers are Raymond Carver, Richard Yates, Kurt Vonnegut, Chuck Palahniuk, Bret Easton Ellis and Hunter S. Thompson. You can find him at http://www.facebook.com/authormichaelcrane
Born in 1974 and being a child of the diverse '80s and '90s, Robert J. Duperre is a lover of literature in all its forms. Be it horror, fantasy, science fiction, literary fiction, or even romance, he delves into it all and relishes every minute. It is his desire to show this love of all genres by creating wide-reaching stories that defy classification, that can reach the widest possible audience.
Robert lives in northern Connecticut with his wife, the artist Jessica Torrant, his three wonderful children, and Leonardo the one-eyed wonder yellow Lab. You can read more about Robert and his views and ideas by visiting http://www.robertduperre.com.
Amanda Hocking lives in Minnesota and writes young adult paranormal romance and urban fantasy. She has self-published ten books so far - five in the My Blood Approves series, three in the Trylle Trilogy, and the first book in The Hollows series, and the standalone fairy tale Virtue. The Trylle Trilogy has made the USA Today Bestseller list and was recently optioned for film by Media Rights Capital with District 9 screenwriter Terri Tatchell adapting the books for screen. St. Martin's Press also recently acquired her new young adult four-book series Watersong, to be released in 2012. http://amandahocking.blogspot.com/
Vicki Keire grew up in a 19th C. haunted house full of books, abandoned coal chutes, and plenty of places to get into trouble with her siblings. She teaches writing and literature at a large, SEC football-obsessed university and has degrees in British Literature, Romanticism, and Postcolonial Theory. She loves music and lost causes; keeps midnight hours; and reads entirely too much.
Other books by Vicki Keire include the young adult Angel’s Edge series, Gifts of the Blood and Darkness in the Blood. Her gothic novella The Resurrection of Blake House will be available in September, and the final Angel’s Edge book, Blood Redemption, will be released this fall. Her serialized SF/F saga Carnivalesque is available for free through major ebook retailers, as well as through her website and blog. Connect with her online at her website: www.vickikeire.com or blog, The Ides of March: www.vickikeire.blogspot.com
Daniel Pyle is the author of Dismember and Freeze. He lives in Springfield, Missouri, with his wife and two daughters. Visit him online at www.danielpyle.com.
Copyright information
All stories in this collection are copyright 2010 Jeffrey L. Bryan, except as noted below:
“Fortune Teller” by Michael Crane
Copyright 2011 Michael Crane
“Day of Sacrifice by S.W. Benefiel
Copyright 2010 S. W. Benefiel
All rights reserved.
"Hangman" by Michael Crane
Copyright 2011 Michael Crane
"The Second Coming of Pippykins" by Amanda Hocking
Copyright 2010 Amanda Hocking
"Of Shoes and Doom" by Amanda Hocking
Copyright 2010 Amanda Hocking
"S.O.L." by Michael Crane
Copyright 2010 Michael Crane
“Shiners” by Joel Arnold
Copyright 2010 Joel Arnold
“New and Improved” by Daniel Pyle
Copyright 2011 Daniel Pyle
“Chorus” by Robert J. Duperre
“Copyright 2011 Robert J. Duperre
“This Silent Country” by Vicki Keire
Copyright 2011 Vicki Keire
All rights reserved. All stories included with the permission of their respective authors.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Fortune Teller by Michael Crane
The Fortune Teller’s Lament by JL Bryan
The Officefrau by JL Bryan
Spectrum by JL Bryan
Day of Sacrifice by S. W. Benefiel
Hangman by Michael Crane
The Second Coming of Pippykins by Amanda Hocking
Of Shoes and Doom by Amanda Hocking
S.O.
L. by Michael Crane
The Fixer by JL Bryan
Bad Code by JL Bryan
Shiners by Joel Arnold
New and Improved by Daniel Pyle
Chorus by Robert Duperre
This Silent Country by Vicki Keire
The Long Night by JL Bryan
About the Authors
Copyright information