“Then they came, you see,” he explained to the human. “Just another animal at first, very unpromising. Not particularly fast or clever, not good at hiding, no teeth or claws to speak of. But slowly they took over. Some new magic, resisting all the glamours we wove. One by one the trees fell and now we’re overrun.”
The human was looking at him with the sort of uncomfortable expression Jack was familiar with. Albert didn’t reply for a few moments.
“This…infestation, sir. Do you mean what I think you mean?”
“Yes,” said Jack.
“Only it’s a bit outside my normal sphere, see. It’s a bit awkward, like.”
“Your card said ‘no job too large or too small.’ It extended guarantees and talked of handling ‘large outbreaks.’ Was all that a lie? Is your word not your bond?” Jack gave him a look, putting all his mind into it. He still had some of the old powers. Yellow eyes glimpsed through the trees at night, enough to trigger a reaction deep in the human’s hindbrain.
Gratifyingly, Albert took a step backwards. “No, no, sir. ’Course not. It’s just a bit…well, I mean, how far do I go?”
“Given you’re one of them, you mean?”
“Yes, there is that.”
“Some survivors are fine, Mr. Mann. We’re not the brutes here. Spare who you will, restore the balance. The question is, can you do it?”
The human looked back at the city around them. He sucked in his breath in the way of tradesmen through time preparing a customer to hear a big number. Jack didn’t care. Money wasn’t a problem. He’d learned long ago humans would do anything for gold, even if it did turn back to pebbles after a year and a day. He could pay whatever the human wanted ten times over.
“Poison might do it,” said the human. “In the air or water. Or a disease, maybe. Shooting’s not really going to be practical.”
“Excellent,” said Jack. “I’ll leave you to work out the details.”
The human looked back at the balcony door, eager to leave. “Right, well, I’ll see what I can do, sir. I’ll send you an estimate in the post, shall I?”
Jack held out his hand for the human to shake. “Do that. And I can rely on you? Your word is your bond, Albert Mann. Upon your soul.”
Albert squirmed for a moment, looking for a way out. But Jack’s gaze had him skewered. Albert shook. “Yes, well, you can rely on me, sir. Good as my word. Always have been.”
“Excellent,” said Jack. “And one more thing, Mr. Mann. Do you happen to know the name of a good landscape gardener?”
“A…landscape gardener, sir?”
“Yes. When you’ve finished your work I’m going to need rather a lot of trees planting.”
Saving for a Future
Nick Barton
Editor: Sometimes one gets exactly what one wants but lives long enough to regret it.
Missiles found on Cuba. Kennedy negotiating with the Reds. America prepared for nuclear war, building fallout shelters, managing drills and stockpiling food and ammo. Nuclear fire was on the way. So, it was a good day to rob a bank.
Eddie Carver prepared by planning to get rich. Eddie, like all of America, had heard the news of the coming end of the world.
Chamberlain’s Bank of America branch more or less housed the cops’ dirty money. Everybody knew it, but nobody said it. The police ran the town in more ways than one. It was their payload that would seal Eddie in one of those concrete-clad fallout shelters that big wigs had been building in Montana. A past contact owed him a favor, and saved him a place. But first he needed the cash.
Waiting in a van outside the bank, he studied his chosen colleagues. Hal Monroe and Bill Brooker. Prior to the job, Eddie had agreed to fair’s fair, everybody gets an even share. Of course, he never mentioned his intentions. His contact never said anything about bringing friends underground.
Eddie took his shotgun off the rack. “Initials only inside the bank. Got that?”
“Just like always, Ed.”
He smacked the back of Bill’s head. “What did I just say?”
“Just like always, E.”
“That’s right. B, you’re on crowd control. H, you and I handle the clerks. We’ll follow them, crack the vault, and back topside in five minutes. Anyone starts anything, put ’em down. Don’t think about it.”
“Police response?” H put his hand on the door handle, itching to get going.
“Less than five minutes. Ideally, we need to leave in three. Anything else?”
They said nothing. Picking up their weapons, they slung their duffel bags over their shoulders, rolled down their balaclavas, and filed out.
Snow fell in thick clusters, collecting on their shoulders. Heavy snowfall meant reduced visibility and less traffic. Weather reports warned South Dakota that a big storm from Canada was coming. If it isn’t radioactive, let it blow, E thought.
He opened the door, taking aim at the clerks behind the glass.
“Everybody on the ground!”
A chorus of screams escaped the crowd. Half hit the floor like maggots at boot camp. The rest remained standing, dumb with terror.
“Today is not a good day to piss me off. Any thoughts you got of pushing red buttons, kill ’em now.”
The panicked shouts and screams died into whimpers. A good sound. That meant B had them under control. The bank, like Chamberlain, was a small place. There weren’t more than ten people in the lobby, and about five behind the glass. Easy pickings.
Reaching the outer door, E aimed at the clerk on the floor. The glass may have been bulletproof, but when faced with a barrel of darkness people did what they’re told.
“Open the door. Now!”
A pale-faced man stood up, fumbled with his keys, dropped them, and picked them up again. He opened the door, and received a punch in the face.
“Open the vault.”
Pale-Face shook his head like a kid caught red-handed. “I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?” H said.
“None of us have keys.”
This time H hit him in the face, blackening his other eye.
“Think we’re fucking stupid? Open the vault!”
E had other ideas. Pale-Face may have thought they were stupid, but he was stupid. Looking at his colleagues confirmed it. Their eyes darted away when they met his, and the clinking on their belts weren’t house keys.
These stubborn bastards are standing between me and a way out of this doomed planet, he thought. Bombs would fall, and he wasn’t going to die in them.
He raised his shotgun at the woman cringing in the corner.
“Give up the keys. Pull ’em out of your ass if you have to. If you don’t, I’ll paint Blondie’s brains across the back wall.”
She screamed and hid her face behind her hands, as if they might protect her.
“What’s it gonna be, Irish?”
Pale-Face, bleeding and puffed up, unclipped a keyring off his belt, and offered it like a peasant to a king.
E snatched it and hauled him up by his collar. “You’re coming with us. Blondie, you too.”
H grabbed her by the collar too, ignoring her screams.
“We’re leaving in three.”
B saluted, his eyes never leaving the crowd. “Ready when you are.”
Their footfalls echoed in the vault below. Chills shivered up E’s spine. Suppose I’ll have to get used to this.
The vault door stood at the end of the hall, standing seven feet and housing the police’s filthy money. Two keyholes flanked either side of the door. E thought about sailors priming nukes from their subs. Twisting two keys in unison, igniting an entire country in flames. He couldn’t die like that.
They swung their hostages to the side.
“Open the vault.”
Pale-Face’s look of terror became one of disdain. E felt a little offended. He wasn’t a Commie looking to bring the world to its knees. He was just a guy looking for shelter. What right did the pale fuck have judging him? He wanted to add another
bruise to his face, but the clock was ticking. Open the vault, get the cash, and get the hell out. Just like any other job.
Pale-Face took the key without a problem. H yanked Blondie’s key off her belt, but she wanted nothing to do with it, as if it was something toxic.
He slapped her face. The report ringing out in the cool atmosphere. “Open it!”
Taking the key, E directed him toward Pale-Face. His eyes on Blondie. “This key is going inside a hole. Right now, I’m not sure which one.”
H laughed, even nudged Pale-Face like chums sharing a joke.
Blondie stopped whimpering, but terror remained alive and well inside her eyes. He meant every word. This wasn’t any other job. This was the last job. Once Russia or America pushed the red button, the world reset to zero. No more heists, and no more stubborn bank clerks getting in his way.
Just peace and quiet below the face of the world.
She took the key, shaking so much he didn’t know if she could even hit the lock.
“Your turn.” H pushed his gun against the back of Pale-Face’s neck, reminding E of a Nazi executing a Jew.
Both keys turned, and the vault pinged bingo.
“Party time,” H said.
No mood for quips, E went inside, dumped his duffel bag and shotgun on the table and began loading cash. H stood like a gunslinger holding bounties hostage. One crying, one plotting revenge. He saw it in his eyes.
“Move, and her powdered face goes on the wall.”
Rolls and rolls of cash flew inside the bag. Twenties, fifties, hundreds. His mind raced as he threw them, thinking about fresh linen, clean rooms and a life of security bought by Chamberlain’s dirty cops. Leaving a world of crime behind, he could—
Blondie shrieked. “What the hell was that?”
E felt it too. A vibration. Distant, but there. He glanced up from the table.
“Just a tremor.”
This time there was a boom, as loud as thunder. A mass of screams wailed from above.
“My god,” Pale-Face said.
“Shut up,” H said, uneasy.
“You don’t think—?”
A crack of a rifle butt against his cheekbone, splitting his skin.
“I said shut the fuck up!”
The screams became an orchestra of pandemonium. E filled the duffel bag, his heart galloping fast enough to burst.
“Oh no,” Blondie said, grabbing her hair in fistfuls. “It’s happening. They’ve done it!”
“I said shut the fuh—”
A furious, heavy rumble, like a gigantic pot of boiling water roared topside. Before Eddie’s mind adjusted, Pale-Face swung his hand, smashing H in the face, leveling him. Blood sprayed against the wall in a fine arc. The clerk stared, bloodied and unafraid, at Eddie.
He saw Pale-Face’s intentions like a neon sign.
“NO!”
Eddie lunged forward, slipped over fallen banknotes and crashed against the vault door, slamming shut. Pounding the door, he shouted like a kid having a tantrum.
“Hal! You can’t leave me in here! HAL!”
Nobody said a word. Nothing made a sound save for the wild wind above, and another nuclear blast.
It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
Sea of Darkness
Jay Seate
Editor: Civilization, society, and even life is a crystalline matrix. How much of an impact will cause it to shatter?
My alarm sounded at seven o’clock. I slapped it off and kept my eyes tightly shut, seeking a few more precious moments of quiet, but the world wouldn’t wait forever. I rolled over expecting to witness the sunlight streaming through my bedroom window.
Nothing but darkness, not even a shadow, as if our sun had abandoned the galaxy, the thick blackness of the darkest night imaginable. I closed my eyes tightly and rubbed them with the heels of my hands before opening them again. No reassuring golden glow, only the gloomy nothingness of a coalmine deep in the bowels of the earth unable to even see my clock. My hands reached out with fingers curled into claws, as if I could pull away a black shroud of extreme night and reveal the familiar world of light and images. I grasped only air.
I’m a newspaper reporter. I rely heavily on my senses and it was clear this was no dream. I was as blind as the Cyclops in The Odyssey. I furiously rubbed my eyes until they burned, to no effect, then fumbled for my bedside phone while fighting a wave of panic, knocking a picture of my latest girlfriend from my nightstand in the process. I heard the glass crack as it hit the floor.
My next impulse was to dial my direct line to the newsroom by feeling the raised numbers on a touch tone. Jimmy from the night shift answered. “What?”
I could hear shouts and the scurrying of people in the background. “It’s Sam. I...I can’t see!”
“You and everybody else! Nobody can see, man! It happened about three hours ago. It’s like the end of the world. We’re getting reports in from everywhere.”
“Nobody?” I said dumbly, momentarily setting aside my own sightlessness. “I’m going to come in and see what I can do.”
“That’s just it. No one can see to do shit! We’re all caught in the same trap, apparently all ten billion of us. We’re down here running into each other. There’s nothing to do but try and contact our families.”
“What do they think caused it?”
“Hard to say when you can’t figure out how to call someone. But the couple of scientists and doctors we’ve got on speed dial aren’t willing to speculate yet. All we’ve got is radio, TV. The UP wire is useless. There’s a lot of talk about how long our audio systems will stay up. Trust me, stay home.”
I reluctantly hung up. Surely I could get to my p. c. and start on the story. Then the overwhelming force of the situation slammed into my frontal lobe and unleashed a tremble that proliferated from my spine into my extremities. No written stories, no pictures, no newspapers, unless they are in braille. Here was the story of a lifetime and I couldn’t write it.
Transportation? A city full of hysterical people running and falling, smashing into each other in panic—a Three Stooges world. “It’ll be okay,” I whispered without conviction. “Machines and electronics will still work. Most everything is computerized. Blind people get around all right.”
I found the TV remote and punched in the numbers for CNN from memory. The fact that Big Brother was on the air gave some comfort.
“We must all pray this condition is only temporary,” a female talking head cajoled. “We should stay in our homes and remain calm.”
I tried to convince myself this was good advice.
“Specialists from around the world are communicating to try and determine what has happened,” she continued.
It was obvious the “specialists” were clueless at the moment. I felt a new sensation—shortness of breath, racing heart, tingling in my fingers, not to mention the terror that gripped me. It tore at my consciousness. I took five or a hundred calming breaths. I fought to keep my attention on the newswoman wondering how she was dressed, or whether she was dressed at all. A twisted part of me wondered whether things like clothes mattered anymore.
In other disasters someone eventually came to the rescue. Now everyone needed rescue. As a newspaper guy, I’d seen hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, and war rip peoples’ lives apart, but that was the point. That is what made this phenomenon so different. I had seen all those things. Now, I couldn’t see to find my shoes.
No sirens blared outside. In every other crisis or catastrophe, sirens always screamed from patrol cars and fire trucks. There won’t be any more of that unless it sounds to direct people toward the food.
Food!
God, how long would that last?
“Let’s hope we’ll be able to laugh about all of this soon,” a man said with false capriciousness to the woman on the news.
I wished I had someone to cuddle with as I listened to the anchorwoman drone on with updates concerning the heartbeat of mankind.
“T
he White House has issued a statement that the nation is now under Martial Law. Everyone stay in your homes and for those not fortunate enough to be home, stay where you are.”
After fifteen minutes, I could sit still no longer. I felt my way to some loose fitting jeans, a pullover and sneakers at the foot of my bed. Anytime now, someone will find the switch and turn on the lights, I prayed.
The phone rang. I stumbled toward the sound. “Who’s there?” I said into the speaker.
“It’s Ed. Listen. Screw Martial Law. We’re going to get a team together to cover this thing somehow.”
Even in a crisis, Ed was all business, the consummate professional, and the voice of reason.
“We can’t compete with the on-air media, but we can start recording our impressions and take interviews. Work is the best antidote right now.”
He was right. We had to do what we could to talk to people, to transcribe this experience.
“Take one of your recorders and go as far as you feel safe. If this is temporary, we’ll have the human-interest story of all fucking time. If it’s permanent...what the hell else have we got to do?”
“Okay,” I agreed. Even though the world had gone dark, my boss was playing the angles, and I would try to play along. It was better than sitting around going crazy.
The importance of sight I had underestimated. The courage to step out from my only bastion of safety took all the willpower I could muster. “I’m going on assignment,” I said to myself and stepped out into what might as well have been the Black Hole of Calcutta.
I tried to muster a mental snapshot of the surrounding area. I’d driven down the street a thousand times and thought I could stay on the sidewalks and out of harm’s way. I told myself that by shouting out something like “Man walking!” I could avoid blind run-ins with other pedestrians. Maybe I could even get as far as the neighborhood shopping mall.
Even though the contemplation of permanent blindness tossed and turned within me just beneath the surface like a thunderous sleeping dragon, I decided to concentrate on the story potential. Almost stumbling before I’d negotiated my two front porch steps, I steered toward the garage to find a broom or rake or something to precede my march to the sea. I’d watched blind people do it. Instead, I found my golf bag and pulled my ball retriever free of its plastic tube.
Enter the Apocalypse Page 3