by Tim Curran
“Zombies. You’re talking about zombies.” Pandora’s eyes darted to the bound Yith. “You’ve created a zombie plague.”
Ys dipped his head in a kind of nod. “That is one way of putting it.”
“Why?”
“We are moving. We’ve abandoned the past, all of us. There’s nothing left of us back there. We couldn’t leave human minds in our bodies; there would have been no one there to watch them, to help them, to explain things to them. So we used your recent dead. There were other options, but this was the most palatable to us all.”
“This was Plan Number One?”
“Actually, this was Plan Number Nine,” Miss Trey was suddenly behind him. She looked at Ys, “It’s time,” she said.
Ys nodded. “We have to go. I warn you, because of the chronal displacement, the prion replication process within a body is very rapid. It will only take moments for these bodies to become antagonistic. You should act quickly.”
Pandora’s emotions changed from fear to anger. “You knew about this. You prepared for it.” Her mind was racing. “Did you cause this? Did you cause all these people to die? My God, were the wingnuts right? Is this part of your plan? Are you softening us up for an invasion?”
The alien time traveler shook his head. “The quake and tsunami were unavoidable. As for the deaths, yes we could have warned you, but the truth is it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Over the next year, large numbers of people are going to die. We would have just been prolonging the inevitable.” Pandora opened her mouth to speak but Ys raised a finger to silence her. “We’re sorry, we truly are. We’ve enjoyed our time with you. We’ve done what we can to help you survive.” He was walking away from her, and toward the strange whirring machine. “As a precautionary measure I and Miss Trey should be tied up like the others, but it takes two to operate the machine, to make adjustments. So I apologize for what this body will do later.”
“I thought, we thought, thought that you were our …” Pandora was stuttering, and out of words.
“Friends?” Ys shook his head. “We never said that, Pandora. You and yours assumed too much. You thought of us as friends, business partners, saviors, geniuses, historians, travelers, but you never realized, never suspected what we truly were.”
“And what is that?” Pandora Peaslee yelled over the sound of the machine as it revolved and spun faster and faster and louder and louder. Mister Ys responded, and as he did Pandora collapsed onto the roof in stunned silence.
Around her the Yithans, both those bound and the two that were unbound, suddenly slumped down. It was as if they were puppets and their strings had suddenly been cut. They were still, horrifically still, for far too long. They were breathing, Pandora could see that, but it was so slow, barely perceptible. They almost looked as if they were peacefully sleeping. Then she remembered what Ys had said about the anthrophages and she also remembered the machete in her hand.
The thing that had been Mister Ys took a sudden breath, one that was echoed by the other Yithians scattered around the roof. His eyes opened and from his throat leaked an animal growl. He sprang at her, and Pandora swung the machete as he flew through the air. With a single blow she severed the head of her former lover and set it spinning across the roof, an arc of blood trailing in its wake. She spun around, letting the momentum carry her. Miss Trey had awakened as well, slower than Y’s, Pandora buried the point of her machete into her skull. The former Yithian twitched and spasmed as the now-empty body adjusted to the fact that its brain was dead. It just needed a moment to remember to lie down and be still.
All around her Pandora watched as the few other humans systematically slaughtered the bound former Yith. It was a process Pandora could catch a distant image of being carried out on another rooftop just within her view. She hoped that all the others were as efficient as she and her new allies were, but she doubted it. From the sudden screaming and animal growls and howls that drifted in from distant unseen quarters those doubts seemed justified. In front of her the televisions still powered by solar panels and fed by satellites still showed the devastation that was inflicting the coasts around the Indian Ocean.
She grabbed the machete and wrenched it out of Miss Trey’s skull. She looked at Mister Ys head as it leaked thick, black blood across the roof and thought about what he had said. “We’re none of those things. True, we have characteristics of all of them, and we may be a bit morbid in our tastes, but being immortal there are very few pleasures left to us. We didn’t come to invade, or study, or document your history. We travel through time to see the greatest shows the universe has to offer. We come to watch civilizations die. Some have called us morticians, caretakers at the end of worlds, corpse-flies, but the truth is, it is a lot simpler than that.” He was smiling as the machine reached its full intensity. “We’re on vacation, nothing more, nothing less; come to see the world of men be extinguished.” As his knees gave out the last few words passed through his undead lips. “I suppose you could call us tourists.”
Pandora grabbed a bottle of champagne and clipped the cork out with a swing of the machete. The pop and fountain of foam caught the attention of the five others who were still alive on the rooftop. “The guests have all checked out: time for the staff to raid the mini-bar and rifle through whatever they left behind.” She took a swig from the bottle. “They had good taste in booze; let’s hope that extends to their choice of guns.” She took a swig from the heavy glass bottle, and then another.
Somewhere in the city, on a not-too-distant rooftop, there was a sudden eruption of gunfire. An automatic weapon was being used in short, controlled bursts. There was screaming. The gunfire stopped; the screaming didn’t. Over the next few hours the pattern repeated itself. The gunfire and screaming spread; the gunfire stopped; the screaming continued. The screaming grew. It was only a matter of time before Pandora and her team had to either move or face what was out there, but the Yith had known that—for them it had always only been a matter of time.
The screaming was infectious.
And it was only the start.
SORROW ROAD
Tim Waggoner
We’ve stopped.
Kris continued gripping the steering wheel, her foot pressing the gas pedal halfway down. But the engine made no noise, even though—she did a quick check—the key remained in the ignition, still turned to the on position. Gazing through the windshield of her Traverse van, she saw three lanes of cars ahead of her, stretching as far as she could see. Like her van, the other vehicles—all of them—were motionless. She turned to look out the driver’s side window to see if the traffic on the northbound side of I-675 was still moving. It wasn’t.
She reached up a hand to touch her cheek and found it wet. Why was it like that?
“Mommy?”
For the merest fraction of a second she didn’t recognize the child’s voice, didn’t even recognize it as a human sound. But then a name bobbed to the surface of her consciousness: Danny.
She looked into the rearview mirror, reached up to adjust it to get a better view of the back seat. Her little boy sat strapped into his car seat, wearing jeans and a red-and-white striped shirt he called his Where’s Waldo? shirt. His brown hair was mussed, which was normal, but his pudgy cheeks were white as bone, as was the rest of his face, and that definitely was not normal.
“It’s okay, honey. We’re okay.”
Her voice sounded strained, almost desperate. She knew something was wrong, felt it deep in the core of her being, but she had no idea what it was. She angled the mirror to check her own reflection and saw her face as pale as Danny’s, her eyes wide and panicked like a frightened animal. No, not simply frightened. Terrified.
But what could’ve happened to scare both her and Danny so badly? They were stuck in a traffic jam, that’s all. She couldn’t remember stopping the car, but that was probably because she’d had a habit of daydreaming while driving.
Where had they been coming from? She couldn’t—and then the details
started coming back to her.
We’ll need to perform more tests in order to be a hundred percent certain, of course, but the last thing I want to do is give you false hope.
The doctor moved a mouse, clicked, and the screen changed from a background displaying a cartoon aquarium—the words Children’s Hospital spelled out on the side of the largest fish—to CT images of a spine.
Her first thought: It’s back.
Her second: My poor baby.
Her third: Fuck you, God. Just fuck you.
Two years ago, a tumor had been discovered on Danny’s spinal cord. The doctors assured Kris and Danny’s father that they’d caught it early enough that surgery and chemo should take care of it. This afternoon, Kris had discovered how very wrong those doctors had been.
She remembered now why her cheeks were wet. She had been crying as they drove home from the pediatric oncologist’s office. Something Danny had said had set her off. Mommy, are they going to have to cut my back open again?
Thinking about it now made her want to start crying anew, but right now she had something else to worry about, and no matter how strange or disturbing it might be, she was grateful for the distraction.
So … they had been driving and she had been crying when the van stopped. And not because she’d taken her foot off the gas and pressed the brake. Wasn’t her foot still on the gas pedal? Wasn’t the van still in drive? Ignition on but engine dead?
One moment she’d been cruising down the highway at sixty-five miles per hour, and the next … she just stopped. There’d been no transition between, no slowing, no swerving, no being thrown forward and back by the van’s momentum. They—and presumably the other vehicles on the road—had stopped instantaneously without any ill effect. Except for a broken engine, it seemed. She didn’t bother telling herself it was impossible. She knew that. It didn’t change the fact that it had happened.
She put the van in park and turned the key in the ignition to the off position. After a half-second of thought, she activated the emergency brake for good measure.
Danny had been silent since her attempt to reassure him, but now he began whimpering. She hit the release button on the seatbelt and turned around to face him. Tears welled in his eyes and his lower lip quivered. He squirmed in his seat as if he were trying to escape from it. She reached a hand toward him, intending to repeat what she’d said earlier, but before she could speak, Danny said, “They’re here.”
He burst into tears and began wailing.
Danny was still crying several moments later, but his wailing had become a soft keening that, despite its lower volume, tore at Kris’ heart even more. She stood outside next to the van holding Danny who gripped her tight with both his arms and legs. He pressed his face to her chest and she could feel him tremble against her. He was a big boy for his age and she normally found him too heavy to hold. But now he felt light and fragile as an autumn leaf.
Kris wasn’t the only one who’d gotten out of her vehicle. The highway was filled with people, all of them standing around, silent and expressionless.
We’re in shock, she thought, but she had no idea why that might be. Sure, the way the traffic had come to an instant stop was weird as hell, no doubt. But strange as it was, she sensed that was the least of it. They’re here. Why had Danny said that? What did it mean?
The silence extended beyond the people and the lack of traffic noise. There had been a fairly strong wind blowing, enough to make her keep both hands tight on the wheel as she drove. But now the air was still. More than that, it felt thin and lifeless. She inhaled, and although she took in a deep breath and felt her lungs expand, the air didn’t feel nourishing. It lay flat and stale in her lungs and left a sour metallic taste in her mouth. She experienced a moment of panic when she feared she couldn’t breathe whatever substance the air had become. But she forced herself not to give in to her fear. She had to keep it together—for Danny.
She shifted Danny—still trembling, still keening—to her left hip.
“Ow! Mommy, that hurts my back!”
Kris knew the growth on his spine wasn’t large enough to be causing him discomfort yet. Still, she felt a stab of panic at Danny’s words and loosened her grip on him so there wasn’t as much pressure against his back. She then reached into her pants pocket for her phone. She wasn’t sure what she hoped it might tell her. Maybe her husband or her sister had sent her a text about what had happened. If whatever it was was bad enough or big enough, maybe CNN had posted a story about it. If nothing else, she could call Kenny at work and let him know that she and Danny were … maybe not okay, exactly, but unharmed. But no matter how many times she swiped her thumb across the phone’s screen, it remained dark. She looked up and saw that many of the people standing near her had had the same idea, and with similar results. It seemed none of their phones worked.
She slipped her phone back into her pocket and repositioned Danny so she could hold onto him with both arms once more. Danny’s keening had been replaced by soft sobs. The sound seemed distant, though, as if it were coming from a dozen feet away. A trick of the weird air? Maybe.
“Kris?”
She barely heard her name being spoken but, when she turned in the direction of the sound, she was startled to see a woman standing only a few feet away. It was Sheri Klein, her neighbor from across the street.
“Weird, huh? All this, I mean.” Sheri swept her arm outward, the gesture meant to take in all the motionless vehicles around them. Her voice was higher-pitched than normal and strained. It made Kris think of a metal wire pulled so tight it could snap at any moment.
“Yeah.” It was the best reply Kris could come up with, but she figured she was doing good to get that much out.
Sheri was a decade older than Kris, a short, round-faced woman whose kids were in middle school. She watched Danny from time to time and, while they weren’t best friends, Kris was glad to have her for a neighbor.
“Do you think—” That was as far as Sheri got out before Danny pointed skyward.
“Look!” he said.
Kris didn’t want to turn her head toward the sky. Something deep inside her knew she wouldn’t like what she saw. But she looked anyway.
A few moments ago the sky had been a beautiful blue with a scattering of diffuse, blurry-edged white clouds. Now streaks of yellow—a sickly pus-colored yellow—threaded through the blue. As she watched, the yellow spread and expanded, the effect not unlike a high-school chemistry experiment where a yellowish liquid is dropped into a flask filled with clear liquid, the new color soon filling the entire container. The process was complete in mere moments, and when it was finished, all traces of blue were gone, and no clouds were visible. And although it was mid-afternoon, the light had dimmed, making it seem more like dusk.
Despite the dimness, the color made her eyes ache, as if she were staring into a too-bright light, and she felt a headache building in the back of her skull. The pus-sky filled her with a deep sense of violation, of wrongness, and her stomach twisted with nausea. She managed to keep from throwing up, but Sheri wasn’t so fortunate. She doubled over, hands pressed to her stomach, yawned her mouth wide, and a torrent of liquid gushed onto the road. Kris expected to see stomach acid, bile, maybe chunks of partially digested food, but what came out of Sheri’s mouth was thick and dark, more like oil than vomit. There were lumps in the foul muck, but once they hit the asphalt they began scuttling away on segmented legs or pushing themselves on distorted, uneven cilia. As bad as the sight was, the smell was far worse—a fetid combination of spoiled meat, rotting vegetables, and human waste. Kris almost puked at that point, but the thought that she might bring forth the same obscene mixture—or something even worse—helped her keep her stomach’s contents where they were.
Danny looked at the dark mess Sheri had released and, rather than being dismayed or repelled by it, he gazed upon it wide-eyed. He didn’t appear to suffer any physical distress himself, and he no longer seemed upset. Kris should’ve been grateful
for that, but his reaction—or lack thereof—seemed wrong somehow, and it worried her more than the strange sky or Sheri’s bizarre sickness.
She looked around and saw that many of the people who’d gotten out of their cars were throwing up. Some ejected the same oil-like substance as Sheri, but others appeared to be vomiting blood or far stranger things like clouds of flies, shards of broken glass, or small animal bones. A thought drifted through her mind, distant, detached.
Things are different now.
Not everyone was vomiting, though. Some were on their knees, sobbing and moaning. Some pounded fists into the sides of their heads, while others punched their cars, over and over, cracking glass, denting metal, and breaking bones.
The Eyes appeared then.
They filled the sky from horizon to horizon, blotting out the new yellow. They varied in size and type, but all were enormous. It was as if the sky were filled with planets, moons, and asteroids all crammed together. Some of the eyes looked more or less human, while others resembled those of cats, goats, fish, or lizards. Some were glossy obsidian, like insects’, while others were orbs filled with swirling nebulae or alien starscapes. There had been times in Kris’ life when she had felt small to the point of insignificance. Gazing down into the Grand Canyon. Standing atop the Empire State Building. Seeing the first sonogram image of Danny inside her. But those times were nothing compared to this.
Kris couldn’t look away from the Eyes. She couldn’t breathe, and she wouldn’t have been surprised to discover her heart had seized up in her chest. She felt the Eyes’ scrutiny upon her—upon them all—as a giant weight pressing down, as if the air pressure had suddenly increased. She felt a strange sensation inside her head. It wasn’t painful, not exactly. It was an itching-tingling, as if hundreds of insects were digging around in the soft meat of her brain. She thought of what Sheri had expelled from her body and terror gripped her. Could there really be insects inside her skull, gnawing away at her brain with their tiny but oh-so-sharp mandibles?