The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2014 Edition

by Paula Guran [editor]

  Reverse out the strangeness—that’s what Cash’s thinking mind told him to do. Put yourself in their place. Somehow, some way, they come to consciousness on McMillan’s ranch. Maybe they had no idea where they were. Perhaps they lacked the facility to process sounds or smells. Maybe their vision was into the infrared spectrum, like a rattler’s. Anyway, they hit the ground (or came up out of the ground, if they didn’t fall from outer space or burst out of radioactive pods) and commence reproducing, to strengthen their numbers or gain some kind of immediate survival foothold. They discover that for the most part, they cannot walk around in the daytime because it’s too hot, too bright. They wander around and maybe incur a few casualties in their experiential curve. They’re like men on the moon, seeking a shelter with oxygen and environment. Perhaps they were transitional beings in the process of adaptation, evolving to live in new circumstances.

  Illegal aliens, Cash thought with a sting of irony.

  Edging up in the icehouse door was one of the hardest things Cash had ever done. There might not be any ceiling to this madness, but there might be a floor, and that bedrock had to be composed of Cash’s own resolve. This could not be about anything, right now, except retrieving his partner. All the rest, the theories, the what-ifs and mad speculation, had to be left for later. And yes, the fear, too. All Cash needed to know was that bullets seemed to put the creatures down just dandy.

  The icehouse door was latched by a large silver handle. It made a complicated clockwork sound when Cash cranked it, as though he was breaching an immense safe. Cold air and condensation ghosted out around the insulating gaskets.

  Nobody home.

  He could not find a light switch and so brought up his baton flashlight. There was something in here, but it wasn’t a cadre of shufflers waiting to eat his face or a line of frozen beef sides to mock his fear.

  The object looked like a big, broken section of latticework, laced with frost, propped against the stainless steel wall. About five-by-five, it was obviously a segment of something larger, something elsewhere, or perhaps the sole piece worth salvage. When Cash tilted his head to one side he saw that it resembled a big honeycomb, with rows of orderly, stop-sign-shaped pockets. Each octagonal chamber held one of the bugs, suspended like prehistoric scorpions in amber, although this medium was a pliable, transparent blue gel the consistency of modeling clay. It gave when Cash pressed it with the tip of his ballpoint pen, then sprang back.

  Twenty or thirty of the little compartments were empty.

  Peek: There were—head count—sixteen creatures outside now, cutting him off from the truck. They had hidden themselves, and waited for him to enter the freezer. The empty area between Cash and his opponents hinted that they had gotten the idea to keep their distance.

  They were learning.

  Best tally, he could clear twelve with the shotgun and the Ruger before he had to reload, if he did not miss once. He still had little idea of how fast they could move when motivated. He could hang tight and wait for dawn, a fat ten or eleven hours . . . but not in the freezer. They might not even disperse at dawn. They might wait until noon, when it got hotter.

  Beyond fear was exhaustion. How long could Cash keep his eyes open and guard up?

  Longer, he realized, than he could go without taking a dump. His last visit to the throne had been over twenty hours ago, and his bowels were threatening to burst like a sausage casing in a centrifuge. Great.

  He could surrender. But not yet.

  He could spy on them and pick a moment. They might dither around trying to form a plan of attack, or an ambush, or a diversion. Not yet.

  He checked the door again. They hadn’t moved. He tried to squeeze his ass cheeks to interrupt the inevitable. Go or no go? He did not laugh at his own folly, because if he started, he might not be able to stop, and when authorities locked him in a padded cell, he’d still be laughing.

  Utterly humiliated, he moved to the back corner of the freezer, dropped his pants and tried to move his bowels as fast as possible. The tang of his own refrigerated shit brought him about as low as he’d ever felt, and rendered him infantile.

  The pack with the two cigarettes rustled in his pocket, beckoning his attention. He craved a smoke, just to purchase a smoke’s worth of time.

  Brilliantly, he lacked the means to light up.

  “Emerge. Cash emerge now.”

  It was a voice from outside. It sounded like a very bad imitation of Carrie’s voice, clotted and syrupy.

  Cash hurried his pants on and buckled up so he could refill his hands with guns.

  All right, full disclosure: Cash had always wanted to see Carrie’s breasts. But not this way.

  She was naked, striding through the group, her flesh disorganized and baggy. Her face was melting right off her skull. Cash saw her breasts. They hung offsides due to the V-neck rip in the center of her chest. The skin that had drooped along her arms accordioned at the wrists the same way as a paper wrapper mashed down from a drinking straw. She reached up with elephantine hands to grab at the tear in her chest. The tissue rended apart, gone fishy and rotten, as the mouthless being stepped out of the incubation envelope that used to be Cash’s partner. Its knot of throat bulged as it mimicked speech via some unguessable mechanism.

  “Cash. Emerge.”

  It had been less than an hour since Carrie had been stung.

  When Cash came out, shotgun-first, the entire group moved forward several emboldened steps. He shot one, then another, and they dropped. In the nightmare slow-motion of a fever dream, he saw the one that had issued from Carrie pick up her Smith from the ground. One tendril of the clawlike pincer wrapped the butt while the other sought the trigger. It leveled the pistol at Cash and fired.

  The slug went high and wide.

  It’s not her, not any more . . .

  That hesitation almost killed him. As he brought the Mossberg to bear, a second shot flew in true and punched him in the upper left chest, spoiling his aim. A hot rivet of pain fried his nerves. He grimaced, corrected his muzzle, and cut loose. The thing that had peeled off Carrie’s body lost half of its knoblike head and spun down in a shower of gluey mulch, dropping the pistol, slide open.

  While the rest rushed him.

  Cash side-stepped to the smokehouse, dealing out the remaining rounds from the shotgun and getting one more hit, one miss, and one wing-strike that blew away a pincer at the elbow.

  It was at least ninety degrees inside the smokehouse. The air was ripe with cured pork. There was an interior crank handle that could be barricaded if he could find something to wedge under it.

  Carrie had favored light loads for diminished recoil. As a result, the semiwadcutter had lodged in Cash’s breast and failed to exit. Dense blood, not completely oxygenated, was already blotting his shirt. Heart blood.

  The creature had picked up Carrie’s gun, fired once, corrected, and hit him on the second shot. They were learning. Now they would know the purpose of any other firearms loitering around, say, inside the house, if . . .

  Cash remembered the spent shotgun shells in the yard. Someone else had tried earlier, and failed. Someone had shot their own dog, the Rottie, to keep it from changing, too.

  Cash hoped they would not come into the smokehouse due to the heat.

  They might waste time deciding what to do, but wouldn’t breeze on in. Not yet. He should have just bolted. Run for the hills and made it someone else’s problem. Now he was cornered, low on ammo, and in need of medical attention. But if he ran, he still had no idea of how fast they could pursue him.

  Or maybe Cash could wait until they adapted more, or learned enough to come in after him, at which time he still had the option of putting a slug into his own head.

  But not yet.

  Thudding and thumping, next door. They were inside the icehouse.

  They could imprint off horses, dogs, people, anything. Until Cash was all that was left to use.

  Outside there came a sputtering noise, like a motor missing c
ylinder strokes. The generator for the icehouse had been chugging away for the better part of a day or two without being refueled. It was running out of gas. Cash knew the sound. The icehouse would thaw and the stored bugs would melt free. Would the smokehouse cool off as the freezer warmed up?

  Buttoning up for hours was no longer an option. Cash had scant cognizance of the passage of time. He did not wear a wristwatch. Almost nobody did, any more; everybody had mobile devices. Cash’s own cell was still in the door pocket of the Bronco.

  Not yet.

  Cash used his fist to hammer a pork shank under the door handle, because the creatures outside had come to test it. Right outside the smokehouse door, they were less than a foot away from his face.

  Shooting through the door would get Cash nothing except ricochets and a less secure door. Maybe, if he could get to the roof . . .

  The smokehouse was a wood frame veneered in sheet metal. There was a white oak curing barrel that could be flipped to provide a step-up. Every time Cash tried to correct his balance to bulldog his way through the ceiling, his wounded shoulder blew new spikes of pain all the way down to his feet and the bullet hole began to pump fresh. His life was dribbling out.

  Obscured from view was a tiny skylight, probably for ventilation. It was difficult to see since the ceiling had browned to a uniform pattern. Too small for his body, but there. He had to bang the corroded hasp back with the grip of his Ruger.

  Yeah, don’t attract any attention to yourself with the noise.

  The hinges squeaked as he pushed against the hatch with the heel of his good hand. His entire right side was going numb and his vision was getting spotty. Shock was setting in. He could just get his head through the hole if he was willing to sacrifice an ear. Outstanding; his last tetanus shot had been years ago. Amoebic infections from tainted meat were the worst.

  Soon he would not be able to trust the evidence of his own senses. He would hallucinate, grow dopey, pass out.

  Cash had to clamber down to find a plastic crate for more elevation, then repeat his unsteady ascent. He could just get his head through the hatch. The ceiling was as solid as a carpenter’s warranty, no rusty nails to auger loose, firm framing or your money back.

  Cash could see the pickup truck. There were no creatures in sight except the ones he’d terminated. They were knocked down in their own mud, near the hideous skin-pile that used to be Senior Patrol Agent Carrie Rixson.

  To the left, clear; to the right, ditto. The view to the rear was harder since Cash had to peer through the interstice between the hatch and the roof, but it looked okay behind him, too.

  This calm could not hold. They had retreated to regroup, find weapons, or make more. Cash could belay his fear and move now, or try to clench and await what came next, as he grew more helpless by the second. The tension was far worse than trying not to shit. You couldn’t win. Your own biology would doom you.

  He nearly fell on his face getting down from the clumsy barrel-and-crate arrangement. He nearly started weeping when the chunk of pork stuck under the door handle refused to wiggle loose. But in three more heartbeats, the door was open and he was moving as fast as he could manage for the truck, hoping his adversaries had not become savvy enough to take the keys.

  They were gone from the yard.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Carrie’s remains. She deserved better. “God, am I sorry.”

  That did not slow him down, though. The pickup’s cab door was still open. The keys were still in the ignition. And Cash was alone in the turnaround.

  “You fuckers!” he shouted hoarsely. “I’m coming back! I’m coming back for all of you! I’m gonna kill every single one of you!”

  No response. Locked into the cab, windows up, Cash unbuckled his gunbelt to get at his trouser belt, which he unthreaded to bind his own wadded up T-shirt tight against the oozing bullet ditch in his shoulder. The Ram truck fired up positively on the first try. Not like in the movies, where the vehicle won’t start while the monsters close in. The seatbelt alarm pinged annoyingly.

  Cash laid the pedal down and thundered over the cow-catcher at the archway, highbeams up to max. The fuel stood at half a tank. He did not allow himself to breathe until he rocketed back onto the International Highway. Now it was safe to crack the windows and blow the AC on high.

  He remembered the cigarettes in his pocket, dug one out, and lipped it. A little nicotine would be better than nothing at all. But the truck did not have a dashboard lighter. Few of them did, anymore.

  The black tarp in the pickup bed, unsecured, blew free just in time for Cash to glimpse the big section of blue amber honeycomb, his cargo, before his dulled eyesight focused on the bug that had been left for him inside the cab. It tensed to spring, just out of swatting reach. That’s what the monsters had been up to in the icehouse—setting a trap and backing off, to let Cash ambush himself.

  The big Ram truck swerved off the road and stopped. It would sit for a while, metal pinging as it cooled, the AC still blasting. Then, eventually, it would resume its journey into the city.

  David J. Schow is a multimedia writer whose work includes the script for the dark cult classic, The Crow, and episodes for television series Masters of Horror. The author of nine novels, his acclaimed short stories are featured in dozens of anthologies and collected in seven volumes. He is also the author of an award-winning book of essays on modern media, Wild Hairs and The Outer Limits Companion (on the classic TV series). Schow recently updated the latter with a new fiftieth anniversary source for all things Outer Limits: The Outer Limits at 50. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

  What happened to the Scouts in Troop 13? Why did they not come back

  from that last patrol, when we patted their little green hats

  and kissed them goodbye so happily?

  THE LEGEND OF TROOP 13

  Kit Reed

  The Lost Troop

  In the mountains tonight, in the jagged hills below the observatory, the Girl Scouts’ voices ring—just not where you can hear, for the missing girls of Troop 13 are as wary as they are spirited.

  “Beautiful,” Louie says. He paints the observatory dome, top to bottom on his revolving scaffold, so he’s in a position to know. He says, “It’s a little bit like angels singing.”

  It would lift your heart to hear them, tourists claim, because tourists believe everything they hear, whether or not they actually heard it.

  Although they’ve been missing for years, some people think the legendary lost Girl Scouts of Troop 13 are still out there on Palamountain, camping in the shadow of the great white dome. We don’t know how it happened or where our girls went when they went missing, but tourists come to the mountain in hopes, and business is booming.

  They claim they came to see the cosmos through the world’s largest telescope, but the men’s wet mouths tell you different.

  As for our girls, there have been signs, e.g.: surprise raids on picnic tables, although it could be bears. Outsiders swear the Last Incline is booby-trapped with broken glass and sharp objects, but they can’t prove it. They have to lug their ruined tires downhill to Elbow and by the time the wrecker brings these tourists back uphill with their new tires, the road is clear—no Scouts, no sign of Scouts, but their cars have been rifled.

  So there’s a chance our girls are running through the woods in their green hats at this very minute, with their badge sashes thrown over items missing from our clotheslines. It’s like a party every night, twelve Girl Scouts on their Sit-Upons around the campfire—feasting on candy and s’mores, judging from supplies stolen in midnight break-ins at Piney’s Store. Our sheriff and the State Police looked for months; the FBI came, but the cold trail just got colder. It’s been so long that even their mothers have stopped looking.

  Now, you may come to Palamountain expecting to find dead campfires, skeletal teepees, abandoned Sit-Upons; you may think you spotted little green hats bobbing up there on the West Slope, but don’t expect to catch up with them. You won’
t find our lost girls, no matter how hungry you are for love or adventure, so forget about easing whatever itch you thought you’d scratch here. They haven’t been seen or heard from since the day Tracie Marsters threw the gaudy Troop Leader Scarf around her throat and led them up the mountain.

  What happened to the Scouts in Troop 13, really? Why did they not come back from that last patrol, when we patted their little green hats and kissed them goodbye so happily? Did they not love us, or are there things on Palamountain that we don’t know about? Were they wiped out in a rockfall or kidnapped by Persons Unknown, or are they just plain lost in the woods, and still trying to find their way back to us? Our Scouts couldn’t be carried off against their will, that’s unthinkable. Their motto is “Be Prepared,” and they’d know what to do. We would have found markers: bits of crumpled paper on the trail, blazes on the trees, to signify which way they were taken.

  We’re afraid they went looking for someplace better than the settlement at Elbow, halfway up the East Grade on Palamountain, or our boring home town in the foothills. Prepared or not, we don’t want to think about them running around in some big city. Unless they were running away from home and us personally, which is even worse.

  Better to think of them as still up there, somewhere on Palamountain.

  Listen, there have been sightings!

  A tourist staggers into Mike’s bar in the Elbow and he is all, I alone am left to tell the tale, I alone am left to tell . . . At this point words desert him; it was that intense. No, he can’t tell you where, or what, exactly, and that’s the least of it.

  We need to shush him, so we shush him. That kind of talk is bad for business.

  If they’re still up there, they’re too happy to hurt you. They’re probably fine, running along to: “Ash Grove” or “Daisy, Daisy, we honor your memory true,” that’s the Girl Scout version, “We are Girl Scouts, all because of you . . . ”—wonderful songs. You won’t hear them singing as they bound along, because Scouts are trained to be careful, they’d be trilling.