"It wasn't your fault, Junior," Davie's voice says. "I missed you too. We had some fun. Remember our last holiday; remember roller-skating on the pier at Bournemouth? Neither of us could stay on our feet."
I laugh, but at the same time I want to cry. I dangle myself from the rope-swing. I get ready to drop, even though I'm still swinging quite high and I'm scared I might break something. I've got to do it though.
There is a sudden white flash which stays in my eyes. I shake my head and squeeze the rope. Did something hit me?
A sudden gust of strong, hot wind stings my right side. The rope snaps and I fall onto the dusty ground. I cry out but I can't hear myself in the roar of the burning wind which seems to get even worse. It hurts to try and breathe but I have to crawl forwards as hot dust scorches my face. The wind gets hotter, stronger still. The hurting on my face gets worse.
I can't bear this...
Behind me, the brook starts to bubble and steam rises from it. Everything's going cloudy and red. I can only see out of one eye, and it hurts really bad, but I can just still see Davie...or is it Daniel standing there…?
There are huge black clouds in the distance, way, way behind the trees at the end of the field. They look really cool, growing so quickly, so massive...
Am I still crawling to him...?
...He's on fire. He's falling over in flames, his face burning black.
“DAAAVIEEEE...”
Everything's black but I can taste metal.
There's an almighty rumbling and shaking in the ground but I can't hear anything anymore.
OH GOD, THE PAIN!
PLEASE...
JUST GIVE ME...MORE...TIME...
Of Dreams and Song
Filip Wiltgren
Editor: Too often we turn a blind eye to the apocalypses that take place every day in our own world.
In the beginning was the Song. The Song created the waters and the waves. The Song created the dreamers and the air we breathe. And we dreamers heard the Song and joined our dreams to it.
For untold dream-sleeps we chorused, dreaming the pure Song throughout the waters. But amongst us were those who were not content to dream, those who would change and overpower. They were the singers.
It would be comforting to say that the singers were strangers that rose from the depths, but the Song is truth and the truth is that the singers came from amongst us. Remember this, you who will sing and dream after my flesh rots and my bones drop to the silt, remember that the singers came from amongst us and that their sin is ours.
The singers took hold of the Song and changed it. They sung the waters cooler and the krill fatter, and they sung their own greatness and mastery. But like the wind that stirs the water into waves, so, too, did the singers stir the Song. Where there once had been calm there now was storm, and from that storm rose the rocks that kill.
Once the rocks were sung, they could not be unsung, no matter how hard the singers tried, and their singing brought new dangers to the waters. It tore the dreamers into clans, and warped them. Some of the dreamers shrunk, becoming like calves even when adult. Some lost their baleen, feeding with teeth, like sharks. And some became twisted, eating other dreamers. These are the killers in black and white, the eaters of dreams, and when they joined the Song, they ripped it, battering it like a hurricane.
The Song grew shrill, giving the singers power over blood and life, but as even the mightiest wave breaks, the Song broke. It cracked into pieces and from those pieces came the rock-men.
At first the rock-men dwelt upon dry stone and when they ventured into the waters the killers would hunt and eat them. But the rock-men learned to kill from the dream-eaters and soon they killed all that swam.
This is our shame, that the singers would draw such pain and such death into the waters. For the rock-men were deaf to the Song, and their souls were dry. They killed without end, and they filled the waters with the blood of dreamers. Only the dream-eaters did they leave alone, for the eaters of dreams were their kith and kin.
Throughout the waters, the plea and pain of the dreamers flowed, and dreamers and singers alike joined to save the rock-men from the dryness of their souls. We dreamers would swim up to their rock-shells and dream at them, and the singers would sing at them.
The rock-men would not hear the Song, nor heed the dreams. They could but kill, and as we died the Song grew weak. The noise of the rock-men drowned it, pushing it deep under the surface where even the great bone-tooth singers could not dive.
And thus the waters changed. The dreamers died. The singers died. Even the eaters of dreams died, for once the rock-men had tired of killing dreamers they turned on their kin. The singers grew remorseful, and they would swim onto the rocks, trying to dream them back into the ocean, but the Song has grown weak and the singers few. The rocks would not budge.
They are our shame and our punishment, dry teeth growing from the waters. There the rocks will remain until the Song is dreamt by all, dreamers and singers, even the eaters, alike. Then the waters shall return and wash over the world, and the rocks and the rock-men will sink back into the nightmares whence they came. The dreamers shall be united one and all, with no blood or tooth between them, and the waters will lie peaceful and still.
But that day is far off yet, young dreamers, so dream, dream the Song as it was dreamt in the beginning. Dream it to each other over the noise of the rock-men, over the cry of our dying. Dream it, and dream of times to come.
Every Day
Naomi Brett Rourke
Editor: Apocalypses come in all shapes and horrors, some of our own creation.
Chuck found the old neighborhood almost unrecognizable. He had been gone a long time. He stepped carefully over cracked, uneven chunks of broken pavement. Only the brown crabgrass told him that anyone or anything had ever lived on Oak Street. He spent his boyhood here and eventually traded it for manhood.
The sun beat down on his head and sweat trickled down his brow. The trees were brown and sere, no leaves on their branches; and empty, forlorn nests from birds long gone could be spotted here and there. The remains of a tree house, long rotten, perched in the big oak tree in front of his house. He looked at it, rapt, musing at the boy he once was and the man he became. A piece of wood, hanging by a splinter, caught a random bit of wind, separated, and fell to the ground with a muffled thud. So much for my childhood, he thought wryly. Chuck Rose fought by nature and by profession, but even he couldn’t escape reality. What he’d had here was long gone. He had turned his back on it a long time ago. The world had turned its back as well. Charred cities and toxic earth.
Chuck strode toward the dilapidated house, deliberately crunching the fallen lumber under his boot. He stepped up onto the porch avoiding broken steps and tried the doorknob. It turned in his hand. Well, why not? No one had lived here for many, many years. He eased the door open with the music of rusty hinges. He peered into the dark and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. What he had to do was personal; no one could know the reason for his visit.
The silence screamed. There should be something making noise—wind, mice, anything. The stillness pulsed, and to Chuck it seemed like he was underwater with that cool hush that he remembered from boyhood swimming pools and still, glassy lakes. For Chuck, there were no more lakes. They had all dried up. There were no more swimming pools with no one to fill them. There was just silence and loneliness and regret.
He stepped forward, surprised when his feet made no sound. Perfect. He strode to the living room. Where intact, the carpet wore a deep stain of mildew. Chuck stared at it in surprise. That isn’t right. His brow furrowed as he pondered. There’s very little water so why would it be mildewed? Huh. He circled the carpet and the mouse-gnawed sofa but there were no mice anymore. He looked for tiny corpses but there were none. The tiny rodents must have been eaten long ago when food got scarce. By cats or—
Chuck shook his head with a smile that only touched his mouth. Who else might have been eating the thr
ee blind mice?
As a boy Chuck had jumped and tried to touch the tall center of the arch to the dining room. He looked up and raised a lazy hand to try again when a whisper touched him from behind.
“Chuck…”
Icy fingers touched his neck as he stopped short and carefully reached his right hand for his Beretta 9 mm. His hand found nothing. What the—? He barely held his sphincter in check. He felt the gun’s weight instead on his left side. With his left hand he snatched it out and aimed. His weapon pointed at an empty dining room. He pivoted right and backpedaled. No one was in the living room. Slowly, Chuck crept into the dining room, listening, looking. No one. No voices. Hesitantly, he holstered his gun, then he remembered. He was right-handed. He always had his holster on the right side. What is going on here? Chuck looked down at his hands, turning them over. He’d felt no awkwardness as he whipped the gun out left-handed. The left hand had felt absolutely normal. He didn’t feel right-handed. Weird. Chuck turned and continued into the dining room, mulling his change of handedness and the whisper that had almost unmanned him.
In the dining room he almost smelled the turkey and gravy of Thanksgivings past, when his mother had been the best cook on the block. Her holiday dinners had been legendary and for a moment his mouth watered with the flavors of silky, buttery mashed potatoes, tart cranberries, crunchy Brussels sprouts, and green bean casserole with fried onions atop. When he married, his wife, Teresa, made the best pies. Pecan and creamy pumpkin in the winter; apple, cherry, and blueberry in the summer. He remembered taking his children out by the dirt road where blueberries grew, and in the early summer the royal blue of the berries vied with the endless robin's egg blue of the cloudless sky. He and his children—how many were there? Two? Three? That's odd. I can't remember. They yanked berries and ate so many, the blue juice staining their mouths, that Chuck swore every time that they'd never eat their dinner but they always did. Teresa's handmade pastries topped even her pies with her signature daffodil cut-out designs on top, slightly brown and steaming from the oven.
As he skirted the remains of the table, he lightly touched his fingers to the dusty top. It invoked even more memories. He snatched his hand up in disgust. I don’t need this. Since when have I been all gooey-like and a family man. Never. The job was my family.
“Chuck…” The whisper came again.
He turned and, as he was expecting, saw no one. Weird. Weird things are happening. Why? Spinning back, he exited the dining room and made his way through each of the remaining rooms, barely glancing at broken furniture, threadbare carpet, broken mirrors, and remembering deserted dreams.
He couldn’t wait to finish his tour of the house. He went outside to a broken-down shed. Yanking the door open, he found rusted garden implements. He chose a crowbar and a pickaxe and went back inside. His heart beat slowly as he entered the bedroom he had shared with his wife. Chuck steeled himself for what was to come. Just to make sure… He knew what he had to do but he didn't relish it. Looking down at the moldering carpet, he found just the right spot, and swung the pick high. He almost toppled forward as the bite of it slicing through the wood was easier than he thought. Stupid. The wood's rotten, asshole. He shook his head and raised the pickaxe high again and again and, after a time, chose the crowbar to pry up the floorboards.
When he yanked out the rotten wood, he threw the crowbar away and used his hands, digging, digging, and even this far below the surface it was bone dry. The dust was everywhere, clogging his nose and his mouth. Chuck licked his lips and blew a breath out and when he leaned down again, he felt something soft. It couldn't be. She would be desiccated, all dried up—a mummy. He gently moved the dirt off the soft thing which, when uncovered, turned out to be a soft female hand. Teresa.
Chuck sat back on his haunches and looked at the hand. That hand had loved him, made him countless dinners, reared his children, and finally had brushed away the tears that just couldn't move her recalcitrant husband to stay with the family. Chuck gazed at it. It was soft. So soft. The times, though, needed hard hands. Hands that knew what to do and didn't pause at doing it. She had been weak.
"No, Chuck." The whisper began and to Chuck's horror, the hand, that soft hand, began to move. "You were weak. You didn't stay with us. You abandoned us. All of us."
The dirt fell off her in sheets as she struggled to sit up in her grave. Other than the dirt on her face, she looked exactly like the last time he had seen her alive.
"What was so important that you couldn't stay with your family? We loved you." Her arms rose up and hands grasped for him. Chuck gasped, pistoning his legs, clods of dirt hitting Teresa on her breast and face, shooting him to the very back of the pit, where he scrabbled in the dirt and climbed out.
"I had to go," he yelled. "I had to go save the world. I had to."
"Is your world saved now?" Teresa asked, tilting her head like a hound. "Is this the world you wanted? Everything's dry, unloved, dead." Putting her hands below her, she pushed herself to a standing position and stood, gazing up at her husband. Her eyes, once blue, now only held cloudy white and gray. Her lips were gray as well. Other than that, Chuck thought confusedly, she looks all right. Except…except that hole in her chest where her heart should have been. That's nasty. He didn't remember doing that.
"No, you don't understand. It was my job. I had no choice."
"You always had choices!" Teresa suddenly bellowed, and then whispered, "And you had no job." She began to drag herself out of the hole with hands now resembling claws. She never broke eye contact with her husband. Chuck stumbled back.
"You always had choices." Another whisper came from behind and Chuck pivoted and, when he saw his son, a groan came out of his mouth.
Just as dirty, but not looking anywhere near as good as his mother, nine-year-old Tad shuffled forward. Tad's ears and mouth were black craters matching the one in his mother's chest. Worst of all, his hands were blackened and rotted. Chuck remembered those hands throwing balls, making birdhouses, playing his guitar, and he gave a sob.
"Tad…"
"Daddy…" Behind her older brother, Emily shuffled in her faded pink nightdress. She's five years old, Chuck thought wildly, but she's not! She's not! Intact hands didn’t match her blackened and rotted feet. As she shuffled forward, she tottered like a broken doll, reeling and swaying. Her blonde hair was matted and sparse. Chuck remembered brushing her long, golden hair and dancing with her every night before she went to bed. There was another hole in her chest.
"Daddy," Emily whispered. "Daddy, I missed you. Why don't you dance with me. Didn't you like us?" She held her arms us and started toward Chuck, but then started to growl deep in her throat. Tad joined with his own wail.
"Get away from me," Chuck mumbled, taking step after step backward into the hall, grabbing at his Beretta, which suddenly was not on either hip.
"Look what you've done to us," Teresa said, stalking her retreating husband. "Look what we've become. And you're to blame. You took this," Teresa's voice took on a shrill tone as she gestured to her chest, to the hole where her heart had been. "With your apathy. With your absence." The children's cries became louder and keener. "Look at your daughter, your son! Look!" Teresa transformed from regretful memory to terrifying nightmare. She hunted quicker now after her husband, scuttling sideways like some demented crab, but faster and faster, while Chuck retreated in front of her rage.
"Look! Look! Why?" she screeched. She was running now, on vengeful feet, and in a moment she was on him. She clawed his face.
"I'm sorry," Chuck shrieked, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it." Stepping backward, Chuck lost his footing on a scrap of rug. As he strove to right himself, his howling children threw themselves on him. Together they all bumped down the stairs in a heap. As his leg broke, Chuck shrieked. When his shoulder dislocated, he ground his teeth together so hard one snapped. Over and over he tumbled. The pain blanketed his mind. All pain he’d felt before didn’t compare to the agony he felt when he hit the bottom floo
r with his entire family on top of him.
Chuck groaned; his body was bruised and broken. The children circled him, looking down at him as he writhed on the floor. His wife spoke from her height, head tilted.
"We'll be here with you, darling. Every time you come back to this house. Every time you step foot in this house. And you come back so very often. Every time, every day, every hour, every minute. We'll be here for you just like you weren't here for us." The children keening, kneeled down beside him. Teresa bent down and grasped the hole in her breast and rent it open with an inhuman howl. Then, when the sides of her chest hung open with gobbets of blood and meat hanging down, she cradled his face in her soft, gore-riddled hands. Chuck, eyes wide with horror, opened his mouth for a scream that never came as she placed her mouth over his.
***
Lisa’s nurse's clogs made shushing sounds as she walked quickly down the path on her way to the elderly man in the wheelchair under the widely spreading oak tree. Dee, the blonde-haired nurse in charge of Chuck, looked up from the book she had been reading.
“Hey, watcha doing?” Dee smiled and patted the seat next to her on the bench.
“Not much. Just here for Mr. Rosenstein’s weekly visit. I have to be quick.” She held out a pack of cigarettes, looking over her shoulder. Dee took one and plucked her lighter out of her pocket, first lighting hers and then Lisa’s.
“Still hiding from Vasquez?”
“Still.” Lisa exhaled a plume. “I don’t know what her problem is. We’re outside.”
“A healthy home is a smoke-free home,” Dee sing-songed.
“Yeah, well, most everyone in this place isn’t going to live out the year anyhow,” Lisa sucked on her cigarette, “so I don’t think that matters too much. More forced family fun for Charlie, here?” Lisa queried.
Enter the Apocalypse Page 27