2014 Campbellian Anthology

by Various

  “Buenas noches, Señorita Cristina,” came his voice from outside the door. “Hermana Constanza tells me you have something you wish to discuss with me.”

  I kept quiet. He was just trying to figure out where in the room I was before he walked in.

  “I also heard you missed dinner,” he went on.

  Well, that explained how he knew it was me. After the other night, he probably expected me to try something. Then I didn’t show up at dinner, and he must have guessed whatever I planned was in motion. I thought he was off looking for blood, when in fact he had merely gotten out of my way and let me corner myself.

  At that moment he appeared, backlit, in the door frame. In his right hand he held a rather large kitchen knife. In his left was the brown bottle from the fridge outside, wrapped in a handkerchief. I had an image of Tito holding a similar knife, the goat in front of him.

  The knife changed things. I might possibly have overpowered him if he didn’t have it, but I didn’t want to rush him with that thing in his hands. I scanned the room, searching for a weapon.

  I didn’t have much time to think. When I spied the razor on the edge of the sink, I grabbed it without waiting for a better idea.

  Leopoldo snorted when I picked up the straight razor, and I felt a bit chagrined myself. This tiny blade that didn’t even come to a point hardly compared to the huge knife he held.

  “If I scream—”

  “Nobody will hear you,” he said, cutting me off. He was right. No rooms bordered the infirmary, and nobody but El Jorobado walked the halls at this hour.

  Leopoldo stepped into the room, and I edged back along the wall.

  “I’ve never killed a girl on purpose,” he mused aloud. What did he mean, on purpose? Then I understood. Elena’s first roommate. She must have died as a result of something he did. Probably the same thing that left me throwing up and Elena unconscious.

  “No reason to start now,” I said.

  Leopoldo chuckled. “On the contrary, señorita. You’ve been making a lot of noise. You must be silenced.”

  He took another step toward me, and I took another step along the wall. I could only back up so far before I ran out of room.

  Leopoldo breathed heavily. A knot formed in the pit of my stomach. He wasn’t taking his time because of the little razor in my hand, or because of his impediment. He drew it out because he was excited. I represented the next step. If he killed me, I probably wouldn’t be the last. I noticed a bulge in his pants, and a corresponding shudder rose from the depths of my own body.

  Perhaps I could turn his excitement to my advantage.

  I held the blade against my wrist. “Let me do it myself.”

  His eyes widened. “Why?”

  I had to be convincing now. I widened my eyes and let my voice waver. It wasn’t hard to do. “It will hurt more if you do it.”

  He held up his brown jar. “Come here, and you’ll feel nothing.”

  I shook my head. “That makes me throw up.” He had to know I was not lying. He had seen for himself.

  He frowned. Meekly, I added, “Once I pass out, you can do what you want with me.”

  I could see how that excited him.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  I edged toward his work table, picked up an empty jar, and returned to the sink, turning my back to him.

  “Turn around,” he said.

  No dice. “I can’t do it with you watching,” I said shyly.

  He shrugged and waved a dismissive hand. I turned around once more. A tingle ran up and down between my shoulder blades. I was defenseless if he wanted to stab me now.

  I drew the wrapped washcloth from my waistband, held it in the palm of my left hand, and sliced deeply. The razor went all the way through and sliced my palm as well. Hopefully he was too distracted to realize I hadn’t slit my wrists like he expected. Just in case, I twisted my arm, letting the blood run down my forearm, and then I went back to squeezing it into the jar. I needed enough blood to be halfway convincing, but I had no idea how much I could lose without passing out or worse.

  Tito said it would only take a drop. The jar held much more than a drop of the goat’s blood, so I dropped the cloth in the sink and turned around, blocking Leopoldo’s view with my body. I needn’t have worried—his eyes were fixed on me, not what was behind me. “Tome,” I said, holding the jar in my outstretched hand. “Bebe.”

  He looked puzzled. “You just started.”

  I shrugged. “I want to watch. I’ll give you more after.”

  He took the jar, and a wave of dizziness passed over me. I didn’t think I had lost much blood yet; something else must have made me lightheaded.

  Leopoldo brought the jar to his face and sniffed, but there was nothing inside except blood. He took a tentative sip, and then guzzled it down, blood running down his cheeks and onto his neck. He emptied the jar and held it out for me to fill again.

  Before I took it from him, though, he staggered back. “What have you done to me?” he asked, his eyes wide.

  His skin, already pale, seemed to stretch, becoming drawn out and leathery and gray. The twist in his back became more pronounced, and he seemed to shrink visibly in front of me. Meanwhile, a series of spines burst through the back of his black shirt. El Jorobado dropped the jar and the knife at the same time, as his hands became gnarled and claws grew from his fingers.

  He still gaped at me, demanding an explanation, but when he tried to speak again only an inarticulate roar came out. He lurched toward me, and I braced for an attack, certain I would die here after all. I threw myself to the side, but he ignored me and staggered toward the sink instead. He stared at his reflection in the mirror for a long moment, and knocked the toiletries off of the sink with a growl. Then he turned and reeled toward the door. He stumbled away, his legs getting shorter, his feet slipping out of his shoes, and his arms growing longer. By the time he made it into the infirmary, he was supporting his weight with his front paws as well as his rear ones.

  He had become something horrible to look at, but Tito said he would no longer crave human blood.

  And in that moment, I realized what Leopoldo would crave now, now that he’d drunk the goat’s blood that Tito had blessed and prayed over.

  “Chupa cabras, cabrón,” I said to his retreating form. “Chupa cabras.”

  Paul Antony Jones became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of Extinction Point (2012), from 47North.

  Visit his website at disturbeduniverse.com.

  * * *

  Novel: Extinction Point (excerpt)

  EXTINCTION POINT

  (excerpt)

  by Paul Antony Jones

  First published as Extinction Point (2012), by 47North

  • • • •

  Chapter One

  THE WAITING ROOM was small and cramped.

  Emily hated it. The drab off-white-colored walls, lined with cheap folding chairs, only added to her sense of claustrophobia. At the opposite end of the room, a bored-looking receptionist tapped at a keyboard with a single, neatly manicured finger. Her jaw worked a piece of gum; it appeared occasionally between the young woman’s lips as a pink bubble before popping noisily and disappearing again.

  A gray-haired man and a teenage boy sat waiting for their turn to see the doctor. The kid was absorbed in a cell phone, his thumbs flying over the tiny keyboard, while the man flipped through the pages of a tattered magazine, pausing now and then to raise a hand to his mouth to cover a dry, rasping cough.

  Emily glanced at the magazine in the man’s hands: “Dog Grooming Monthly,” the title read.

  Why do these offices always have such weird tastes in magazines? Emily wondered, as she made her way over to the receptionist’s desk. Was there some obscure magazine subscription plan especially designed for doctors’, dentists’, and accountants’ waiting rooms?

  The receptionist was too engrossed in whatever was going on with her computer to notice Emily as she
patiently waited in front of her desk. After a half minute of standing there with not even a glance from the woman, Emily cleared her throat loudly. “Hi! I’m Emily Baxter from the Tribune. I have an eleven o’clock appointment with Doctor Evans,” she announced.

  The receptionist, stopping her constant chewing momentarily so she could push the gum to one brightly rouged cheek, glanced up from her computer, which Emily could now see had some kind of game running.

  “I’m sorry,” said the woman, “what did you say your name was?” The bubble gum put in another brief appearance, flashing a glimpse of pink against the woman’s white teeth.

  “Emily… Baxter,” the young reporter repeated slowly, just to make sure the receptionist got it right. “I’m from the New York Tribune and I’m here to interview your boss about the clinical trial he’s working on.”

  The receptionist made an obvious pretense of checking her computer before picking up the cheap phone sitting on her desk and punching in a pair of numbers.

  “Doctor Evans, I have an Amelia Bexter here for you. Yes, she says she’s a reporter… okay.” Emily matched the woman’s disingenuous smile at the obvious mangling of her name. “His office is just down there,” the receptionist continued, gesturing toward a corridor behind her desk. “Third door on the left.”

  “Thank you,” said Emily as she moved in the direction the woman had indicated, but the receptionist’s attention had already returned to the pressing issues of her computer game.

  “Bitch!” Emily muttered under her breath before she knocked on the office door.

  • • •

  Forty-five minutes later, Emily allowed the door to the doctor’s office to swing shut behind her. She let out a small sigh of contentment as the sounds and smells of New York City washed over her. Emily loved this city. She’d grown up in Denison, Iowa, a small backwater farm town that was as unremarkable as the hundreds of other towns surrounding it. Looking back, it seemed like she had spent most of her youth just waiting for the moment when she could get out of town and move somewhere, anywhere, as long as there were people—lots of people.

  She had never meant to be a reporter; in fact, she had fallen into it by luck rather than design. Like many small towns, hers had an even smaller local paper. It published an issue once a week covering everything from the county sheriff’s arrest record to the usual small-town politics. They had been looking for an entry-level reporter to cover the local town board meetings, and Emily had, on a whim, decided to apply for the position. Hal, the editor, interviewed her. He was a grizzled old man who looked eighty but could well have been one hundred for all she could tell. He had been in the newspaper business since the Second World War when he had served with the US Marines’ Combat Correspondent Corps. He’d told her he would try her out and pay her as a stringer for a couple of weeks. “If you fit in, we’ll see about something permanent, young lady,” he had told her.

  Emily had taken to the job in a way she never imagined possible. Within a month, Emily had secured her place as a staff writer for the little paper. Two years later, Emily found herself promoted to lead writer. “Comfortable as a tick on a dog’s ass,” Hal had eloquently described her success. She stayed with the paper for another five years before she felt she had enough experience to take on the challenges of working for a bigger publication. She’d been pleasantly surprised by the number of requests for interviews she received, but had finally decided to accept an offer from the New York Tribune that was just too good to pass up. It was her ticket out of the small town she had longed to leave for so long.

  She’d been working the metro desk at the Tribune for six years now and loved every minute of it. The job would never make her rich but it paid enough that she got by without having to worry about when the next paycheck was coming. She lived alone, so she didn’t have a lot of the overhead other reporters had, like a family to take care of.

  Emily never learned to drive; there never seemed to be a need for it. Back in Denison, she could hop on a bike and be anywhere she needed to be in less than ten minutes. In New York City, she would have spent more time stuck in traffic jams than she could afford, so she stuck with her trusty bike. For longer jaunts, she would usually take the subway.

  Of course, no matter how much she loved the job and the city, there would always be days like today. It was sweltering hot, ninety-two degrees with 65 percent humidity. When you coupled the coma-inducing humidity and heat with the idiot receptionist and her equally annoying boss, you had the makings of a less than perfect day. But Emily didn’t mind too much; it was almost noon and she had her first story for the day in the bag, which meant she was already ahead of the game.

  She had a choice now: head back to the newsroom or grab a bite to eat at a local café and then write up her article. Emily pulled her smartphone from its holder on her belt and checked her itinerary for the day. She had another three hours before her next appointment, so the choice was hers.

  There was a small Internet café a couple of blocks away that she knew also did an astoundingly good BLT sandwich. At the thought of it, her stomach gave a little grumble. Well, that decided it, then. Emily unlocked the chain securing her bike to a no-parking sign, slung her backpack over her shoulder, and set off in the direction of lunch.

  • • •

  Emily brought her bike to a stop in front of the café. She chained the bike to the security rack the store had courteously installed just outside and walked into the café.

  As she entered the air-conditioned interior of the café, Emily felt the sweat under her armpits chill uncomfortably enough to give her a little shiver. The mellow sound of smooth jazz and the smells of roasted coffee and fresh baked bread immediately grabbed her attention. Her stomach grumbled in anticipation.

  In complete contrast to her reception at the doctor’s office, a warm and honest smile from the café’s owner greeted Emily as she walked to the counter. “Good afternoon, young lady. What can I get for you today?” he asked, a slight accent betraying his Italian origins.

  “I’ll take a cappuccino,” Emily said after looking over the chalkboard list of coffees, “and a BLT for here, please.”

  The café was deserted, the lunchtime rush still an hour away, so she had her pick of tables. She chose a four-seater near the window where she could keep an eye on her bike while she ate. Emily pulled her laptop from the backpack and hit the power button. It only took a minute for the computer to boot up and locate the café’s wireless Internet signal. Emily clicked on her e-mail client and waited for it to load any e-mails she’d received since going incommunicado over the past couple of hours. There was a message from her editor at the paper reminding her to get her stories in before deadline along with the usual collection of spam promising to increase her penis size and offering cheap prescription medication imported directly from China. Nothing important.

  She pulled up her web browser and checked CNN. There was the usual potpourri of stories on the news website’s front page: conflicts still raged across some godforsaken third-world country; a politician had been caught with his pants down again; reports of some weird weather throughout Europe, and some thoroughly uninspiring stock market numbers that meant her 401(k) was going to be worth even less than it was yesterday.

  Emily clicked on the weather article and began reading.

  The Associated Press was reporting a strange phenomenon throughout most parts of Europe, the article said. Local government agencies were reporting an “unknown red precipitation” with no apparent meteorological cause. The first case had been reported in Smolensk, Russia, over twelve hours ago with similar reports of what the news agencies had conveniently, if somewhat unoriginally, labeled “red rain” coming in from Finland, Sweden, Poland, Germany, the UK, and Spain as the day had progressed.

  “Anything interesting going on in the world?” the café owner asked as he placed the plate with her sandwich next to her steaming cup of coffee.

  Emily looked up and smiled. “Not unless you
want to talk about the weather,” she said. Apparently, that didn’t appeal to the café owner as he fired another smile her way before walking back to his counter. Emily took a large bite from her sandwich—it was absolutely delicious—careful not to let any crumbs fall on her keyboard, and she continued reading the news report.

  CNN had decided to eschew the European press’s “red rain” nomenclature and had instead labeled the phenomenon “blood rain.” Right, her reporter’s brain thought. Good move. Give an arbitrary weather phenomenon a scary-sounding name and it makes the whole nonevent sound that much more frightening and threatening. It virtually guarantees a front-page article and probably gives the writer a chance at a couple of follow-up stories too. Lucky bastard!

  The news piece also had a selection of quotes from eyewitnesses to the blood rain epidemic sweeping across Europe. The witnesses reported that the rain had begun falling at around 12:30 p.m., seemingly from nowhere. “It smelled funny and when I licked it, it tasted like sour milk,” one witness in Smolensk had said.

  Why the hell would you stick that stuff in your mouth? Emily wondered. The level of some people’s intelligence never failed to amaze her. Who knows where it came from?

  There was no denying it was an interesting story, she had to admit, but the probability was that some unknown chemical plant in an equally unknown part of Russia had gone all Chernobyl and was spilling this toxic red shit into the atmosphere. And, knowing the former Soviet Union’s track record for reporting these kinds of accidents, well, it would probably be months or even years before the offending chemical plant was located. Even then the Russians would maintain their “lie, lie until you die” policy of nonadmission. Some things just never changed.

  Emily took another large bite from her sandwich and glanced at the clock on the wall behind the counter: the digital display showed 12:28. Time to get my ass into gear. She began the process of shutting down her computer and packing it away for the bike ride back to the paper.