Excerpt From
The Corpse King (Novella Series #21)
by Tim Curran

Here were cadavers of every age and sex packed in sawdust and hay, sunk in wooden casks and barrels of brine. Here were babies pickled in bottles and salted limbs heaped in cupboards. Staring heads had been salted and women injected with preservative. They waited against the walls like mummies and leered from corners with rictus grins. A great assemblage of charnel harvest awaiting the highest bidder, supply and demand. Like the grisly pantry of a cannibal.

Clow grinned. “Aye, I look around me workshop and see coins spilling from every recess, I do. Would you agree, Mickey Kierney?”

“I would,” Kierney said, pulling a lid off a cask and pouring a bit of grain alcohol from a dusty bottle onto the bobbing head of a woman.

“And look here, would you?” Clow said. “Me latest offerings.”

He approached a table with two small forms shrouded in a graying sheet. Carefully, he pulled the sheet back. There were the cadavers of two four-year old twin girls laying there, cold as clay, eyes gummed shut, tiny stiff hands pressed over white bosoms.

“Oh, me fine darlings, look at you, look at the wonder of you,” Clow said, pouring himself a tin cup of gin and toasting them. “Your mother decided she would strangle you, did she? Decided life was better without you, eh? Well, no matter, me and Mr. Kierney will whisk you off to the medical college at first light. You’ll be in good hands there, I say. Better than the moss and crawlies of the churchyard, I be thinking,” Clow stroked their sunken faces, brushed a stray strand of hair away from the one on the left and cooed to the other, drawing a finger over her seamed, blackened lips. “Sssh, sssh, me doves, me lovies, me fine little darlings. We’ll have none of that now, will we? Samuel Clow will take fine care of you, he will.”

Together, Clow and Kierney gently lowered the bodies of the girls into a vat of brine to hold them over until delivery. Their blonde curls skated over the surface a moment, then sank from view.

“Bless ye, me angels,” Clow said, closing the lid.

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Excerpt From
Mr. Darkness (CDSS)
by Douglas Clegg

Chapter One
1

Youth is a cliff. You leap, and repair the broken bones later.

When you’re older, you draw the map, retrace the steps, and find the cliff’s edge again and wonder: would anyone ever jump if they knew how far down it went?

2

Ask Haversham about cliffs and broken bones.

If she could talk, she’d tell you all. I bet she knows the Throat of Manhattan — that cavernous well that drops to the pitch black boulevards of Deep City. I bet she knows the inhabitants of the lightless world–who exist below the squalid tunnels of the city — those people who are less than human (some say) because they’ve lived for generations in the dark.

There she is now — see her? Sitting in her wheelchair, far from the subway platform, half in shadow, half in light. Old beyond years. Shriveled. Her eyes, clouded. Her lips curled slightly in an unintended snarl.

What does she think when she watches that girl — does she remember being young?

Haversham is all white hair and translucent wrinkled skin; her hands, scored with the lines and veins of old age; she makes strange movements with her hands when the arthritis doesn’t knot them up as if they’re snakes wriggling in mid-air.

In her lap, the little gray cardboard shoe box, its lid tied down with twine.

But who is she, really? — when the lights go out and her whisper is against your cheek.  Do you smell her sour milk breath? Do you feel her curled hand reaching toward you as if she wants you to listen?

Do you really want to know what’s inside that plain shoebox, what secret she’s keeping? Does it hold photos of her youth — or wads of dollar bills — or even the brown shoes she once went dancing in when she could walk?

Haversham, with her little knit blanket and flower-print dress and scrawny bird-head and the way she tries to speak, but can’t seem to form the words she wants to say — almost as if she doesn’t know language anymore.

And if she could speak — will you stop to listen?

3

My name is Mina, and my brother’s name is Leo. Leo mostly raised me — even though he’s just a year older than me, he managed to be cook, thief, nurse and even my protector. Our father could do none of this.

Our father is Howard and he’s blind and prone to fevers and muscle pains. Our mother — Marguerite — died when I was young.

In those days, we lived under Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, but not so far down that we are in Deep City. That’s important to know, because it means we’re still above the darkest part of the underworld that opens beneath Macy’s and Saks and Bloomingdales and, yes, even the Excelsior Hotel off of Sixth Avenue.

We fell through some cracks, once upon a time. My father feels we jumped, but I think we were shoved.

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Excerpt from
Walpuski’s Typewriter
by Frank Darabont

“Yes? May I help you?”

Howard froze in the open doorway, letting the wind howl through the long, narrow shop like a wounded beast. The scabrous old man behind the counter was grinning — not smiling, but grinning and rubbing his hands together with a predacious glee like John Carradine in a bad movie. He was positively ancient, a bald fossil in green tweed, sporting a pink roadmap of eczema on his scalp. He reminded Howard of a praying mantis.

A rumble of thunder rolled down Hollywood Boulevard and rattled the windows in their frames. Howard stepped inside and closed the door, shutting out the gale. It wasn’t a dark and stormy night, not yet, but it was getting there in a big, ugly way.

“May I help you?” the proprietor persisted.

“Uh, yes, I hope so.” Howard hefted the battered black typewriter case onto the counter and opened it to reveal the equally battered and black IBM Selectric II within. “I’m afraid my typewriter broke down this morning.”

Broke down, hell. It had self-destructed with an oily belch of smoke and a prolonged, wheezing death-rattle. The sound it made as it expired was that of an old dog farting.

Howard saw no point in relating all the sorry details. “I’m not really sure what the trouble is.”

“How tragic,” murmured the old man, and leaned over the carcass of the machine with a look of overwhelming sadness. Then his grin returned, so sudden and unexpected that Howard took a nervous step back. “You’re a writer,” he croaked. It wasn’t a question so much as the accusation of a hooded Inquisitor.

“Well, yes,” Howard admitted.

“I spotted it right off, didn’t I? I am Cyril Pratt. And you are…?”

“Howard. Howard Walpuski.”

“Feel free to browse around, Mr. Walpuski. See what strikes your fancy. Will you be using the dearly departed,” he nodded at Howard’s IBM with the solicitous air of an undertaker, “as a trade-in?”

Howard shrugged, non-committal. The truth of the matter was he had the sum of his wordly wealth riding around in his wallet in the form of five wrinkled dollar bills and an RTD bus pass. He noticed the faded REPAIRS MADE ON CREDIT sign mounted on the wall and gestured vaguely in its direction. “Actually, I wondered if you might be able to—”

“Affect repairs?” spat the old man. Again, it sounded like an accusation: Zoo, you vant your typewriter repaired, schweinhunt? Und on credit, no doubt! Hmmm…you haff relatives in Argentina, perhaps? Howard felt his face redden, suddenly sure that Pratt knew he had only five bucks to his name, knew about the phone company threatening to disconnect him for non-payment, knew about the nasty letters his bank was sending him with the words INSUFFICIENT FUNDS and OVERDRAWN screaming at him from every paragraph, knew…well, everything.

“Yes,” Howard stammered. “Affect repairs.”

“Well, we’ll just have to see about that, won’t we? We’ll just have to see if repairs are in order.”

Pratt removed the carriage housing cover and poked his nose into the IBM, prodding around with his index finger, whistling and grunting softly under his breath.

Howard turned away and pretended to browse the typewriters that lurked in the shadows on musty shelves and pedestal displays, hating himself for letting the old man make him feel ashamed and small, praying that the Selectric could be mickey-moused into functioning again. He had a deadline to meet, rent to pay.

He’d been to damn near every typewriter shop in the city, lugging the beastly black IBM till the muscles in his neck and shoulders sang arias about muscular aches and pains. Most of the repairmen had simply smiled as politely as possible, shaken their heads, and shown him the door. One guy had actually laughed in his face and said, what’d you do, buddy, use this sucker to barbecue? Howard had resisted a blinding urge to remove all the man’s teeth with one mighty swing of the typewriter; he’d simply thanked him and left, the back of his neck flushed and hot.

There was no reason to hope that Pratt would be any different, none at all.

Howard glanced at the counter and was shocked to find the old man staring at him. He was suddenly sure Pratt had been watching him all along, studying him instead of the typewriter. He pictured himself lying on the counter in the IBM’s place, the top of his head removed like a carriage housing cover, Pratt peering inside his skull and poking his finger around, making those soft sounds under his breath.

“Well?”

“Yes,” said Pratt, “I think repairs are called for. Much needed repairs.”

Howard’s face lit up. For a brief moment he even found himself liking the old guy. “Great! How long do you think it’ll take?”

“Major repairs,” continued Pratt, ignoring the question. “Beyond just the obvious. The typewriter is the least of it.”

Howard blinked. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“Answer me this. If you had an infinite number of monkeys randomly hitting the keys of an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite amount of time, do you know what you’d get?”

Of course Howard knew; this had been standard in every philosophy course he’d ever taken in college. “You would eventually get all the great works of literature?”

“YOU’D GET BULLSHIT, THAT’S WHAT YOU’D GET!” screamed Pratt, causing Howard to jump several feet in the air. “And do you know why you’d get bullshit?”

“Why?” blurted Howard.

“Because monkeys can’t write!” Pratt unfurled a long, gnarled finger and jabbed it in Howard’s direction. “You, Mr. Walpuski, are like one of those monkeys. You just keep hitting the keys, and all you keep producing is bullshit.”

Howard’s mouth dropped open like a trapdoor. “Now wait just a damn minute…”

“Yes, I will affect repairs. On credit, of course. You need pay only a small deposit now, say perhaps . . . five wrinkled dollar bills?”

This stopped Howard cold. He had just been working himself into a good rage, too — had, in fact, promised himself to grab the nasty old codger by the frayed lapels and shake him till his head fell off — but this brought him up short like a bucket of water between the eyes.

“Fuh-fuh-fuh-five . . . ?”

“Wrinkled dollar bills, yes. The remainder of my fee will be 10% of all your earnings from the three novels.”

“Three novels?”

“Yes, of course,” said Pratt, waggling three fingers impatiently in front of Howard’s nose. “My work is guaranteed, you know. For three novels.”

Before Howard could respond, Cyril Pratt tucked the big IBM effortlessly under his arm, case and all. He strode to a door near the back of the shop and threw it open, revealing rickety wooden steps leading down into darkness. He spared a glance over his shoulder. “Well? Come, come! I haven’t got all night, you know!”

The old man plunged into darkness.

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Excerpt from
Blue November Storms
by Brian Freeman

The five men lay motionless on the roof of the hunting cabin, and they stared at the full moon and they talked about everything, their breath turning to fog in the chilly night air. The cabin known to them as The Summer Place sat at the top of a rocky hill, perfectly perched so the men could look down on Beacon Point Lake where the moon’s shimmering reflection glazed across the water’s dark surface.

These five friends had built the cabin when they were in high school, but now, twenty years and five lifetimes later, none of them could remember what had compelled them to start the project in the first place. During their formative years they were called The Lightning Five because of their prowess on the football field, but the nickname had stuck with them for the rest of their lives for another reason. They had done something as teenagers that people still talked about—although no one else knew what had really happened on that humid August day when they were eighteen.

A certain amount of pressure grew from knowing the truth, and holding that pressure inside could make a person implode.

But tonight wasn’t about pressure, it wasn’t about myths. The men hadn’t yet spoken of what they had done twenty years earlier or why they had never let the complete story be known or why a girl had died and yet they were still called heroes. Tonight was about escape and destiny.

And little did the men know, this was going to be their last trip together. Ever.

But before they could come to The Summer Place for the last time, one of them had to return from the dead.

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Excerpt from
Kill Whitey
by Brian Keene

Her name was Sondra, and when she asked me to kill Whitey, I said yes.

What else could I say? If you could have seen her, if you could have watched the way her pouting, glossy lips formed the words, or if you looked deep into her sad eyes, or heard that sorrow in her sweet, pleading voice-you would have said the same thing.

Yes.

Sondra was beautiful. Her dark hair was so black that sunlight got lost inside it. Her eyes were the same color. Her long fingernails were red, matching her lipstick. She had Russian facial features; a Slavic forehead, chin, nose and cheekbones. She was slim, but had a heart-shaped ass and perfect tits. No boob job for her. No way. Sondra’s breasts were one-hundred percent real. You could tell it by the way they moved when she walked. Or arched her back. Or just breathed.

Damn. That sounds bad, doesn’t it? I hate to make her sound like a piece of meat. She wasn’t. Sondra was much more than that. And I’m not one of those guys, in any case. I respect women. Like the great comedian Sam Kinison used to say-what are you gonna do without women? Give sheep the vote? You’ve got to respect women. And I did. But put that aside for a moment. Sondra was what she was-a surefire cure for erectile dysfunction. She put Viagra to shame. You know those women that you see-the exotic ones that you could never ever get? Not in a million years? She was one of those women. And I got her.

She was the type of woman that men would kill or die just to be with one time. She inspired the imagination. She was who you closed your eyes and fantasized about when you made love to your wife for the five hundredth time. Straight guys wanted to fuck her. Gay guys wanted to be her friend. And women… some women wanted to do both. Well, except for those that instantly hated her-and maybe even some of them wanted to be with her, too.

Sondra was her real name, too. A lot of those girls-especially the Russians-use stage names. But not Sondra. She didn’t have to. Her presence was more powerful than any name she could have taken.

Shit. I’m not a poet. I’m a fucking dockworker. I don’t know how to make it any more palatable for you. I don’t have the words or the ability. What you need to know is this-Sondra was sex, plain and simple. She exuded it. It was in her aura, in her pheromones. It dripped from her pores and followed in her wake like a vapor trail. Sondra was desire and lust, and I wanted her from the moment I saw her.

Was it love? I don’t know. Maybe I thought so for a little while, but even now, after all this time and everything that happened, I just don’t know for sure. I’d been in love before. More than once. I knew what it was like. How it felt. What it did to a man. In the short time I was with Sondra, it certainly felt like that. But it also felt like something more-or maybe, something else.

I don’t know if I loved her, but I was damn sure crazy about her.

And that’s why I said yes when she asked me to kill Whitey.

Saying it, making the promise, was easy. Doing it was harder.

Much harder…

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Excerpt from
Black Fire
by James Kidman

The doctors say this will help me heal.

In the days since I awoke from the white haze, the world has been a blur of blinding lights and muffled noises and distorted memories fading in and out of reality, in and out of my dreams and nightmares. Machines beep and hum. Voices carry down the hallway. Somewhere, someone screams for reasons I can only begin to imagine.

I’m trapped in my own little hell.

A personal inferno.

The lights are bright during the day. At night they dim so I can sleep. That’s never a problem, although my dreams are haunted by visions of the recent past. Nothing solid. Every moment is like gazing into a broken mirror. Echoes of confusion. Flashes of movement. But those echoes grow louder and the flashes become brighter with each passing night.

I’m eighteen years old, and the doctors say I’ll recover from my wounds.

Right now my side aches, as if the bullet is still in there. I feel the burning, like a white-hot knife is being jabbed into my flesh.

The drugs create a fog in my head, but I can’t imagine the pain without them. The pain comes in waves, blinding me, branding my mind.

I can’t remember much. Not yet.

But I know a way to recover the memories, to rebuild what I once had.

I told the doctors how I can remember what happened, with a little help from them.

I told the doctors I used to write every day.

The act of putting words on paper has helped me through a lot of difficult times. My fears and dreams, spoken through other people’s mouths. My fears and dreams, acted through other people’s bodies. Nothing real, all fake, all make-believe, yet all reflections of reality.

After some discussion, the doctors have decided it’s what I need to do now: I need to write.

My memories are distant and disjointed, but I’ll try to make this as coherent as I can.

The doctors tell me to write, so that’s what I’ll do.

I’ll write about the day my life changed forever.

I’ll try to explain The Showdown, if I can discover what that really means.

I’ll write this down like any other story I’ve ever dreamed up.

Like any work of fiction that has ever lived inside my mind, and inside my mind only.

What I can’t remember, I’ll piece together along the way.

I’ll pretend it’s all make-believe.

But:

This is real.

This is what happened.

This is why we had to run.

Why my flesh was torn open.

Why I’m here now.

It’s why I’m alive and others are not.

I’ve lost everything that ever mattered to me.

But I’m going to get it back.

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Excerpt from
Friday Night in Beast House
by Richard Laymon

Mark sat on the edge of his bed and stared at the telephone.

Do it! Don’t be such a wuss! Just pick it up and dial.

He’d been telling himself that very thing for more than half an hour. Still, there he sat, sweating and gazing at the phone.

Come on, man! The worst that can happen is she says no.

No, he thought. That isn’t the worst. The worst is if she laughs and says, “You must be out of your mind. What on earth would ever possess you to think I might consider going out with a complete loser like you?”

She won’t say that, he told himself. Why would she? Only a real bitch would say a thing like that, and she’s . . .

. . . wonderful . . .

To Mark, everything about Alison was wonderful. Her hair that smelled like an autumn wind. Her face, so fresh and sweet and cute that the very thought of it made Mark ache. The mischief and fire in her eyes. Her wide and friendly smile. The crooked upper tooth in front. Her rich voice and laugh. Her slender body. The jaunty bounce in her step.

He sighed.

She’ll never go out with me. But jeez, he thought, why not ask? It won’t kill me to ask.

***

Before today, he never would’ve seriously considered it. She belonged to another realm. Though they’d been in a few classes together since starting high school, they’d rarely spoken. She’d given him a smile from time to time. A nod. A brief hello. She never had an inkling, he was sure, of how he felt about her. And he’d intended it to remain that way.

But today at the start of lunch period Bigelow had called out, “Beep beep!” in his usual fashion. Alison hadn’t dodged him fast enough, so he’d crashed into her with his wheelchair. Down she’d gone on the hallway floor at Mark’s feet, her books flying.

“Jerk!” she yelled at the fleeing Bigelow.

Mark knelt beside her. “Creep thinks he owns the hallways,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“Guess I’ll live.”

And the way she smiled.

“Can you give me a hand?”

Taking hold of her arm, he helped her up. It was the first time he’d ever touched her. He let go quickly so she wouldn’t get the idea he liked how her arm felt.

“Thanks, Mark.”

She knows my name!

“You’re welcome, Alison.”

When she stood up, she winced. She bent over, lifted the left leg of her big, loose shorts and looked at her knee. It had a reddish hue, but Mark found his eyes drawn upward to the soft tan of her thigh.

She fingered her kneecap, prodded it gently.

“Guess it’s okay,” she muttered.

“You’ll probably have a nice bruise.”

She made a move to pick up one of her books, but Mark said, “Wait. I’ll get ’em.” Then he gathered her scattered books and binders.

When he was done, he handed them to her and she said, “Thanks, Mark. You’re a real gentleman.”

“Glad I could help.”

***

He stared at the telephone.

I’ve got to call her today while it’s fresh in her mind.

He wiped his sweaty hands on his jeans, reached out and picked up the phone. He heard a dial tone. His other hand trembled as he tapped in her number. Each touch made a musical note in his ear.

Before pushing the last key, he hung up fast.

I can’t! I can’t! God, I’m such a chickenshit yellow bastard!

This is nuts, he told himself. Calm down and do it. Hell, I’ll probably just get a busy signal. Or her mom’ll pick up the phone and say she isn’t home. Or I’ll get the answering machine. Ten to one I won’t even get to talk to Alison.

He wiped his hands again, then picked up the phone and dialed . . . dialed all the numbers.

His arm ached to slam down the phone.

He kept it to his ear.

It’s ringing!

Yeah, but nobody’ll pick it up. I’ll get the answering machine.

If I get the answering machine, he thought, I’ll hang up.

Hang up now!

“Hello?”

Oh my God oh my God!

“Hi,” he said. “Alison?”

“Hi.”

“It’s Mark Matthews.

“Ah. Hi, Mark.”

“I, uh, just thought I’d call and see if you’re okay. How’s your knee?”

“Well, I’ve got a bruise. But I guess I’m fine. That was really nice of you to stop and help me.”

“Oh, well . . .”

“I don’t know where Bigelow gets off, going around

crashing into everybody. I mean, jeez, I’m sorry he’s messed up

and everything, but I hardly think that’s any excuse for running people over, for godsake.”

“Yeah. It’s not right.”

“Oh, well.”

There was a silence. A long silence. The sort of silence that soon leads to, “Well, thanks for calling.”

Before that could happen, Mark said, “So what’re you doing?”

“You mean now?”

“I guess so.”

“Talking on the phone, Einstein.”

He laughed. And he pictured Alison’s smile and her crooked tooth and the glint in her eyes.

“What’re you doing?” she asked.

“The same, I guess.”

“Are you nervous?”

“Yeah.”

“You sound nervous. Your voice is shaking.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“The answer is yes.”

“Uh . . .”

“Yes, I’ll go out with you.”

I can’t believe this is happening!

“That’s why you called, isn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah. Mostly. And just to see how you’re doing.”

“Doing okay. So. I’ll go out with you.”

OH MY GOD!!!

“How about tomorrow night?” she suggested.

Tomorrow?

“Sure. Yeah. That’d be . . . really good.”

“On one condition,” she added.

“Sure.”

“Don’t you want to hear the condition first?”

“I guess so.”

“I want you to get me into Beast House. Tomorrow night after it closes. That’s where we’ll have our date.”

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Excerpt from
Dark Harvest
by Norman Partridge

A Midwestern town. You know its name. You were born there.

It’s Halloween, 1963… and getting on towards dark. Things are the same as they’ve always been. There’s the main street, the old brick church in the town square, the movie theater—this year with a Vincent Price double-bill. And past all that is the road that leads out of town. It’s black as a licorice whip under an October sky, black as the night that’s coming and the long winter nights that will follow, black as the little town it leaves behind.

The road grows narrow as it hits the outskirts. It does not meander. Like a planned path of escape, it cleaves a sea of quarter-sections planted thick with summer corn.

But it’s not summer anymore. Like I said, it’s Halloween.

All that corn has been picked, shucked, eaten.

All those stalks are dead, withered, dried.

In most places, those stalks would have been plowed under long ago. That’s not the way it works around here. You remember. Corn’s harvested by hand in these parts. Boys who live in this town spend their summers doing the job under a blazing sun that barely bothers to go down. And once those boys are tanned straight through and that crop’s picked, those cornstalks die rooted in the ground. They’re not plowed under until the first day of November. Until then the silent rows are home to things that don’t mind living among the dead. Rats, snakes, frogs… creatures that will take flight before the first light of the coming morning or die beneath a circular blade that scores both earth and flesh without discrimination.

Yeah. That’s the way it works around here. There are things living in these fields tonight that will, by rights, be dead by tomorrow morning. One of them hangs on a splintery pole, its roots burrowing deep in rich black soil. Green vines climb through tattered clothes nailed to the pole and its crosspiece. They twist through the legs of worn jeans like tendons, twine like a cripple’s spine through a tattered denim jacket. Rounded leaves take succor from those vines like organs fed by blood vessels, and from the hearts of those leaves green tendrils sprout, and the leaves and the vines and the tendrils fill up that coat and the arms that come with it.

A thicker vine creeps through the neck of that jacket, following the last few inches of splintery pole like a backbone, widening into a rough stem that roots in the thing balanced on the pole’s flat crown.

That thing is heavy, and orange, and ripe.

That thing is a pumpkin.

The afternoon sun lingers on the pumpkin’s face, and then the afternoon sun is gone. Quiet hangs in the cornfield. No breeze rustles the dead stalks; no wind rustles the tattered clothes of the thing hanging from the pole. The licorice-whip road is empty, silent, still. No cars coming into town, no cars leaving.

It’s that way for a long time. Then darkness falls.

A car comes. A door slams. Footsteps in the cornfield—the sound of a man shouldering through brittle stalks. The butcher knife that fills his hand gleams beneath the rising moon, and then the blade goes black as the man bends low.

Twisted vines and young creepers root at the base of the pole. The man’s sharp blade severs all. Next he goes to work with a claw-hammer. Rusty nails grunt loose from old wood. A tattered leg slips free… then another… and then a tattered arm….

The thing they call the October Boy drops to the ground.

* * *

But you already know about him. After all, you grew up here. There aren’t any secrets left for you. You know the story as well as I do.

Pete McCormick knows the story, too… part of it, anyway. Pete just turned sixteen. He’s been in town his whole life, but he’s never managed to fit in. And the last year’s been especially tough. His mom died of cancer last winter, and his dad drank away his job at the grain elevator the following spring. There’s enough rotten luck in that little sentence to bust anyone’s chops.

So it’s not like the walls have never closed in on Pete around here, but just lately they’ve been jamming his shoulders like he’s caught in a drill press. He gets in trouble a couple times and gets picked up by the cops—good old Officer Ricks in his shiny black-and-white Dodge. First time around, it’s a lecture. Second time, it’s a nightstick to the kidneys. Pete comes home all bruised up and pisses blood for a couple of days. He waits for his old man to slam him back in line the way he would have before their whole world hit a wall, maybe take a hunk out of that bastard Ricks while he’s at it. But his father doesn’t even say a word, so Pete figures, Well, it looks like you’re finally on your own, Charlie Brown… and what are you going to do about that?

For Pete, it’s your basic wake-up call. Once and for all he decides he doesn’t much care for his Podunk hometown. Doesn’t like all that corn. Doesn’t like all that quiet. Sure as hell doesn’t like Officer Ricks.

And maybe he’s not so crazy about his father, either. Summer rolls around and the old man starts hitting the bottle pretty steady. Could be he’s noticed the changes in his son, because he starts telling stories—all of a sudden he’s really big with the stories. We’ll get back on our feet soon, Pete. They’ll call me back to work at the elevator, because that chucklehead Kirby will screw everything up. That gets to be one of Pete’s favorites. Right up there with: I’m going to quit the drinking, son. For you and your sister. I promise I’ll quit it soon.

It’s like the old man has a fish on the line, and he’s trying to reel it in with words. But Pete gets tired of listening. He’s smart enough to know that words don’t matter unless they’re walking the hard road that leads to the truth. And, sure, he can understand what’s going on. Sure, the nightstick that life put to his old man makes the solid hunk of oak Officer Ricks used to bust up Pete look like a toothpick. But understanding all that doesn’t make listening to his old man’s pipe dreams any easier.

And that’s what his father’s words turn out to be. The bossman down at the elevator never calls, and the old man’s drinking doesn’t stop, and things don’t get any better for them. Things just keep on getting worse. As the summer wanes, Pete often catches himself daydreaming about the licorice-whip road that leads out of town. He wonders what it would be like out there… somewhere else, far away from here… on his own. And pretty soon that road finds its way into another story making the rounds, because—hey—it’s September now, and it’s about time folks started in on that one crazy yarn everyone around here spins at that time of year.

Pete catches bits of it around town. First from a couple of football players waiting to get their flat-tops squared at the barber shop, later from a bunch of guys standing in line at the movie theater one hot Saturday night. And pretty soon the story picks up steam at the high school, too. Again, Pete only hears snatches of it—in the bathroom out back of the auto shop where guys go to sneak cigarettes, in detention hall after school—and sure it’s pretty crazy stuff, but the craziest thing is that those snatches of conversation all fall within the same parameters, and that simple fact is enough to start Pete thinking this might be the rare kind of story that actually makes the trip from the campfire to the cold hard street.

“Got me a bat. Brand new Louisville Slugger.”

“That ain’t what you need. It’s too hard to swing a bat when you’re on the run, and you’re too slow as it is, anyway. Just look at that table muscle hanging over your belt. You couldn’t catch my great-great grandma rolling her ass uphill in a wheelchair with a couple of blown tires if your life depended on it.”

“I don’t have to catch your great-great grandma, stupid. I don’t have to catch anyone. All I have to do is plant myself in the right place. I’ll let my chuckleheaded cousins do the catching. They’ll flush that sucker like a prize buck, corral him in a blind alley. And that’s where I’ll be waiting… all ready to take my cuts.”

“Fat chance. You spend the night of the Run hanging out in some stupid alley, you might as well set up housekeeping there for a whole goddamn year.”

“Uh-uh. You boys’ll be the ones who end up hanging around this jerkwater town for another year, not me. I’ll have a walking nightmare’s carcass chained to my bumper, and I’ll be across the Line and gone for good by the time you take your first piss of the morning.”

Pete’s been thinking about that conversation for the last few days, putting it together with all the other stories he’s heard. Adding it up one way, then adding it up another… just to see if he can make it come out any other way than the crazy spookshow equation it wears for a face.

And, hey, just lately Pete’s had plenty of time to think about all that stuff. Because it’s the tail-end of October now, and his father’s had him locked in his bedroom for the last five days. Nothing to eat in there. Only water to drink, and—when the old man’s feeling generous—maybe a glass of OJ that’s a long way from fresh-squeezed. You want sufficient opportunity to become a believer, well, there you go. Try feeding a five-day hunger with some OJ that tastes like a cup of freezer-burn, and nothing to wash it down but a bunch of words you can’t get out of your head.

But even with all that chewing around inside him, Pete can’t quite buy into the stories he’s been hearing. Oh, sure, he can believe the part about the kids and the crazy stuff they get up to with their baseball bats and pitchforks on Halloween night. After his run-in with Officer Ricks, he’s certain his hayseed hometown could breed a nasty little square dance like that. But the other part—the spookshow part—Pete’s not so sure he can make the whole trip there.

You can’t really blame him, can you? I mean, think about it. Remember when you were just a little kid, the first time you noticed your older brother locked up tight for five days and nights during the last week of October? Remember the first time you heard that the whole deal had something to do with a pumpkin-headed scarecrow that runs around on Halloween night? It wasn’t exactly easy to believe that one no matter how scared you were, was it?

Not until you experienced it yourself, of course.

Until you were the guy locked up in your bedroom.

Until you were the guy who saw what went down when you hit the streets on Halloween night.

But Pete hasn’t seen any of that. Not yet. Like I said, he just turned sixteen. Tonight is his first crack at the Run. So it’s not really surprising that hisdisbelief isn’t completely suspended. But he’s getting there. And the more Pete thinks about it, the less important the whole spookshow equation seems. The way Pete sees it, what he believes or disbelieves doesn’t really matter much when you look at the big picture.

Do that, and other stuff starts to matter.

Uh-huh. What matters is that his old man has kept him locked up for five days. What matters is that he hasn’t had anything to eat. What matters is that he’s dead cold certain it’s been just that way for every other guy in town between the ages of sixteen and nineteen. The high school is closed—has been for five days. The streets are empty. And guys all over town are pacing crackerbox bedrooms in the wee small hours, gearing up for Halloween night like bulls penned up in tight little chutes.

Pete sits on his bed and thinks about that. Right about now, it seems like a pretty full bucket of validation. So he lets his mind tote that sucker, and he gets comfortable with the load.

He thinks about baseball bats and pitchforks, and butcher knives, and two-by-fours studded with nails, and a couple hundred young guys hitting the streets as darkness falls.

He thinks about a scarecrow running around with a pumpkin for a head.

He thinks about what running down that scarecrow might mean for a guy like him.

Then, as the old Waltham clock on his nightstand ticks down the dying embers of Halloween evening, he stops thinking about all that stuff.

After that, he only thinks about a couple of things… the really important things.

He thinks about the door to his bedroom swinging open.

He thinks about what he’ll do when he steps outside.

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Excerpt from
Hornets and Others
by Al Sarrantonio

Too warm for late October.

Staring out through the open door of his house, Peter Kerlan loosened the top two buttons of his flannel shirt, then finished the job, leaving the shirt open to reveal a gray athletic tee-shirt underneath. Across the street the Meyer kids were re-arranging their newly purchased pumpkins on their front stoop — first the bigger of the three on the top step, then the middle step, then the lower. They were jacketless, and the youngest was dressed in shorts. Their lawn was covered, as was Kerlan’s, with brilliantly colored leaves: yellow, orange, a dry brown. The neighborhood trees were mostly shorn, showing the skeleton fingers of their branches; the sky was a sharp deep blue. Everything said Halloween was coming — except for the temperature.

Jeez, it’s almost hot!

Behind him, out through the sliding screen door that led to the back yard, Peter could hear Ginny moving around, making an attempt at early Sunday gardening.

Maybe it’s cold after all.

He opened the front screen door, retrieved the morning newspaper he had come for, and turned back into the house, unfolding the paper as he went.

In the kitchen, he sat down at the breakfast table and studied the front page.

The usual assortment of local mayhem — a robbery, vandalism at the junior high school, a teacher at that same school suspended for drug use.

In the back, Ginny cursed angrily; there was the sound of something being knocked against something else.

“Peter!” she called out.

He pretended not to hear her for a moment, then answered, “I’m eating breakfast!” and began to study the paper much more closely then it deserved.

On the second page, more local mayhem, along with the weather — sunny and unseasonably warm for at least the next three days — as well as a capsule listing of the rest of the news, which he scanned with near boredom.

Something caught his eye, and he gave an involuntary shiver as he turned to the page indicated next to the summary and found the headline:

Hornets Attack Pre-schoolers

Another shiver caught him as he noted the picture embedded in the story — a man clothed in mosquito netting and a pith helmet holding up the remains of a huge papery nest; one side of the structure was caved in and within he could make out the clumped remains of dead insects—

Again he gave an involuntary shiver, but went on to the story:

(Parkerton, Special to the Herald, Oct. 24) Scores of pre-schoolers were treated today for stings after a small group of the children inadvertently stirred up a hornets nest which had been constructed in a hollow log. The nest, which contained hundreds of angry hornets, was disturbed when a kickball rolled into it. When one of the children went to retrieve the ball, the insects, according to witnesses, “attacked and kept attacking.”

Twenty eight children in all were treated for stings, and the Klingerman Pre-School was closed for the rest of the day.

The nest was removed by local bee-keeper Floyd Willims, who said this kind of attack is very common. “The nests are mature this time of year, and can hold up to five hundred drones, along with the Queen. Actually, new drones are maturing all the time, and can do so until well into fall. With the warm weather this year, their season is extended, probably well into November. The first real cold snap will kill them off.”

Willims continued, “Everyone thinks that yellow jackets are bees, but they’re not. They’re hornets, and can get pretty mean when the nest is threatened. At the end of the season, next year’s Queens will leave the nest, and winter in a safe spot, before laying eggs and starting the whole process over again with a new nest.”

As of last night, none of the hornet stings had proved dangerous, and Klingerman Pre- School will reopen tomorrow.

Peter finished the story, looked at the picture again — the bee-keeper holding the dead nest up with a triumphant grin on his face — and gave a third involuntary shiver.

Ugh.

At that moment Ginny appeared at the back sliding door, staring in through the screen. He looked up at her angry face.

“I can’t get that damned shed door open!” she announced. “Can you help me please?”

“After I finish my breakfast—”

Huffing a breath, she turned and stormed off.

“Aren’t you going to eat with me?” he called after her, hoping she wouldn’t turn around.

She stopped and came back. “Not when you talk to me with that tone in your voice.”

“What tone?” he protested, already knowing that today’s version of ‘the fight’ was coming.

She turned and gave him a stare — her huge dark eyes as flat as stones. She was as beautiful as she had ever been, with her close cropped blonde hair and anything but boyish looks. “Are we going to start again?”

“Only if you want to,” he said.

“I never want to. But I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

“How much more of what?”

She stalked off, leaving the door open. After a moment, Peter threw down the paper and followed her, closing the sliding screen door behind him and dismounting the steps of the small deck. She was in front of the garden shed, a narrow, four foot deep, one story-high structure attached to the house to the right of his basement office window.

“Well, I’m here,” he said, not at all surprised that she momentarily ignored him.

Jeez, it is hot! he thought, looking up at a sun that looked summer-bright, and then surveying the back yard. The colored leaves fallen from the tall oaks that bordered the back yard looked incongruous, theatrical. There was an uncarved pumpkin on the deck of the house behind theirs; it looked out of place in the heat.

Peter turned to stare at Ginny’s little garden, to the right of the shed, which displayed late annuals; they were a riot of summer color which normally would have been gone by this time of year, killed by the first frost which had yet to come.

“I’ve been weeding by hand,” she explained, “but I’d like to get some of the tools out and get ready for next spring. I’ve been having trouble with the shed door again.”

He stepped around her, pulled at the structure’s wooden door, which gave an angry creak but didn’t move.

“Heat’s got the wood expanded; I’ll have a look at it when I get a chance.” He gave it a firmer pull, satisfied that it wouldn’t move.

“Isn’t there anything you can do about it now?”

“No.” He knew he sounded nasty, but didn’t care.

She reddened with anger, then brought herself under control. “Peter, I’m going to try again. We’ve been through this fifty times. You’re punishing me, and there isn’t any reason. I know it’s been rocky between us lately. But I don’t want it to be like that! Can’t you just meet me halfway on this?”

“Halfway to hell?”

She was quiet for a moment. “I love you,” she said, “but I just can’t live like this.”

“Like what?” he answered, angry and frustrated.

“No matter what I do you find something wrong with it — all you do is criticize!”

“I…don’t,” he said, knowing as it came out that it wasn’t true.

She took a tentative step forward, reached out a hand still covered in garden loam. She let the hand fall to her side.

“Look, Peter,” she said slowly, eyes downward. “I know things haven’t been going well for you with your writing, believe me I do. But you can’t take it out on me. It’s just not fair.”

Male pride fought with truth. He took a deep breath, looking at her, as beautiful as the day he met her — he was driving her away and didn’t know how to stop.

“I…know I’ve been difficult—” he began.

She laughed. “Difficult? You’ve been a monster. You’ve frozen me out of every corner of your life. We used to talk, Peter; we used to try to work things out together. You’ve gone through these periods before and we’ve always gotten through them together. Now…” She let the last word hang.

He was powerless to tell her how he felt, the incomprehensible frustration and impotence he felt. “It’s like I’m dry inside. Hollow…”

“Peter,” she said, and then she did put a dirt-gloved hand on his arm. “Peter, talk to me.”

He opened his mouth then, wanting it to be like it had been when they first met, when he had poured his heart out to her, telling her about the things he had inside that he wanted to get out, the great things he wanted to write about, his ambition, his longings — she had been the only woman he ever met who would listen to it, really listen to it. He had a sixth sense that if he did the wrong thing now it would mean the end, that he had driven her as far away as he dared, and that if he pushed her a half step farther she would not return.

He said, “Why bother?”

Again she reddened with anger, and secretly he was enjoying it.

“I’m going out for the day. We’ll talk about this later.”

“Whatever you say.” He gave her a thin smile.

She turned away angrily, and after a moment he heard the screen door slide shut loudly, the front door slam, and the muted roar of her car as she left.

Why did you do that? he asked himself.

And a moment later he answered: Because I wanted to.

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Excerpt From
Hallows Eve
by Al Sarrantonio

Any train ride through any town, any October.

The soothing clack of the rails almost had him asleep. His newspaper lay crumpled in the empty seat beside him; the lights in the train car had flickered off in the middle of the sports page and he finally gave up, leaning back against the stiff headrest and turning to watch the night outside. They were passing endless cornfields under a mounting harvest Moon; under the strong white light the stalks looked dry as paper, stiff at soldiers at attention.

Something caught his eye ahead in the field of corn, towering above it — an orange and yellow shape that resolved itself into a scarecrow topped by a pumpkin head.

As they drew abreast of the figure a fire ignited behind the triangle eyes, the sickle mouth, and it turned its head to look at him. As the train left it behind, Corrie watched the scarecrow move one of its long arms to point directly at him…

(Later on our protagonist is compelled to get off the train and look for the scarecrow…)

The night was still and cold, the chill of pre-winter with the sharp bite of a hard apple. Dry cornstalks crackled beneath his feet. Far off, amidst the lights of Orangefield, he heard a dog howl mournfully, hungry or afraid.

The moon was rising above the cornfield to his left, making everything whiter, colder…

Why had he come here, this was madness–

He heard something rustle in the stalks to his left, off the path. He stiffened, waiting for a cold wind to brush his face, but the corn stalks were perfectly straight, unbowed.

He heard the rustle again and thought of that dog; he did not like dogs…

“Hello.”

The wet whisper brushed his ear at the exact moment a dry arm was thrown around his shoulder. He felt heat, and saw the glow of the orange face between himself and the cornfield. It had stepped swiftly out of the ranks —

“Let’s walk, shall we?”

Petrified with fear, he turned to look into the pumpkin face inches from his own. He felt heat from a candleless glow within; saw wet seeds adhering to the scraped inside of the head, through the sharply-etched nose, eyes, smiling mouth.

The scarecrow laughed, pulled him closer with boneless fingers. It made a dry, ticking sound as it walked–

“You can call me John, if you like.”

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Excerpt From:
“Maternal Instinct” by Robert Bloch, which was published in Mondo Zombie  edited by John Skipp

It wasn’t at all what Jill expected.

To begin with, there was no sign or inscription-nothing to identify that this was 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

And of course it couldn’t be, technically speaking, because you had to circle around blocks away on a side street, toward what looked like the kind of abandoned warehouse the hero always goes to in a cop picture.

Only Jill wasn’t a hero or a heroine or anything in between. She was just her usual self, but caught in a bind halfway between uncomfortable and unprepared. She sat silently as her driver halted the limo on the driveway before a double door and took out a beeper, some kind of subsonic item. For that matter the driver had been pretty subsonic himself; not one word out of him since he’d picked her up at the hotel. Soul of discretion, right?

But suppose he wasn’t a driver? Sure, he’d flashed his papers and wore a uniform, and the limo had the look and feel of a military vehicle. But papers can be forged, uniforms faked and vehicles stolen.

Maybe she was being taken to an abandoned warehouse after all, and the bad guys were waiting in ambush behind the packing-crates or on the catwalks.

A sudden whirring sound jarred Jill’s thoughts as the double door slid upward and the limo moved through the opening, headlight beams tunneling through darkness. In their periphery Jill couldn’t see either crates or catwalks; the structure was an empty shell concealing the route.

Now the stretch ahead slanted down. Down into the dark, down and dirty. Thank God the limo was air conditioned. Jill wondered how this tunnel was ventilated, if at all. And why no lights? Creepy down here. Welcome to the White House, heh-heh-heh. This is your host, Satan, broadcasting to you from the Evil Office-

Jill tensed, uptight. Why were they stopping?

Another beam of light bobbing toward the limo from ahead, fanning the windshield and hood. She could see him now, another uniformidable figure with a flashlight. And behind him, in shadowy silhouette, a carbon copy carrying an Uzi.

Lots of gesturing. And the driver’s window going down, his hand extending to exhibit some plastic. The gun-barrel dipped toward him, monitoring his movements. When the flash-beam invaded the car to flood her face she already had her plastic ready. She moved very slowly, because a sudden shot would probably damage her contact lenses and everything behind them.

Inspection completed, the driver rolled up windows and the car moved on, rounding a corner into a lighted white walled tunnel angling upward. Another sliding door automatically activated ahead, and they wheeled past into a neon-lit underground parking area. Two clean-cut thirty-ish clones in suits with shoulder-holsters were approaching the limo as it pulled into a vacant slot. One positioned himself at the driver’s door and the other walked up to hers. As he signaled she unlocked it and he nodded, smiling. When she opened the door he helped her out of the car; always the perfect gentleman, but don’t forget that shoulder-holster.

“Welcome to the White House,” he said. But there was no heh-heh-heh, and no pretense of an introduction. “Follow me, please,” was all she got as he led her to an elevator on the far wall.

Her driver started up the limo and made a U-turn in the direction from which they’d come; apparently he hadn’t been invited to spend the night in Lincoln’s bedroom. If there really was a Lincoln’s bedroom upstairs. Hey, so it wasn’t a warehouse, but that didn’t prove it was the White House either. Her heart began to thud: no world-class coronary, but noticeable.

Jill and her escort entered the elevator; its door closed and the car moved upward in silken silence. Then the door opened and her heart really started to pound.

Because she was in the White House. It stretched before her, beyond the opened elevator door. now the suit stepped forward, nodding. “This way,” he said.

The hall ahead seemed immense. Those high ceilings, that’s what did it, dwarfing Jill and her guide as they moved down the carpeted corridor between the fancy-framed portraits and the don’t-you-dare-sit-on-it furniture. Antiques. Antiques, priceless but impractical for use, like the high ceilings built in a time before everybody except the rich and famous became accustomed to living in cramped quarters. Under the bright lights everything here seemed spacious and gracious.

But where were the rich and famous?

The hall was deserted, side doors closed. Thick carpet muffled footsteps along an aisle empty of everything, even echoes. Yoohoo, where is everybody?

Jill tried to remember things she’d been told in childhood. About a time the alphabet had been used solely for language, not to designate an FBI, a CIA and other bureaucratic alphabet-soup. A time when ordinary citizens visited the White House without special invitations to participate in some planned political photo-opportunities. They came because it was their desire to spend Sunday afternoon pressing the flesh of a Harding or Coolidge, but now such innocent events were history.

True, she was here by invitation herself, but not for a photo-opportunity. And there was nothing innocent about this meeting with the President.

Her heart started thumping again, just thinking about him, just as it always had since the days when she first got this thing about him. They were both juniors then-she in college, he in the U.S. Senate. After that she graduated and got the dream-job in the think-tank and he got re-elected; then there was that Clancy woman, thank God he didn’t marry her, the silly little bitch would have ruined his chances for nomination for sure, she was just like all the others, those publicized, glorified one-night stands. Long ago-yes, way back in college when she’d first framed his picture from the magazine cover, Jill knew the kind of woman the President should marry. Somebody with looks and smarts, that was obvious, but he needed more than that. He needed someone with a real depth of devotion, who could make the White House a home; somebody fit to bear his children. And long ago, when she fitted that magazine cover photo into a frame, she knew who that woman should be. The magazine had picked him as the ideal candidate for President. Right then and there she’d nominated herself as First Lady.

Talk about silly bitches-okay, so he’d been elected, he was not halfway into his second term, and he’d never married. He wasn’t gay, that’s for sure, but there’s been no lasting relationships. Just as there’d been none for Jill, immersed in the deep end of the think-tank all these years because she was waiting for Mr. Right, that White Knight in the White House; someone who’d never set eyes on her in his life, let alone put her picture on the stand next to Lincoln’s bed or Nixon’s shredder.

Knock it off, Jill. It’s not politically correct. You’re thirty-two and he’s forty-seven, and you’re not on your way to make schoolgirl dreams come true. This is nightmare time.

No sense worrying about her biological clock; she had a job to do. Right now the politically correct Secret Service man was reaching out to open the door at the end of the corridor. They passed through an entryway-probably equipped with sensors and metal detectors, although the SS man’s weapon didn’t trigger a buzz because he halted behind her, then backed out, closing the door and leaving her alone to enter the big room beyond the entry.

At first glance it looked only vaguely office-like, furnished in a style she labeled Early Middle Management-no file cabinets or business machines, just a couch and a couple of comfortable chairs grouped around the coffee table in the corner, and a solitary desk before the window at the center of the room. The setting didn’t seem very presidential, and neither did the man behind the desk.

He was plump, balding, and as Jill observed when he rose from his chair, quite short. His eyes, captive behind thick glasses, peered out at her without expression. Jill hoped her own gaze was noncommittal, offering no hint of her surprise and disappointment. Her heart wasn’t pounding now; it was sinking.

And he was coming toward her, holding out a pudgy hand, smiling an avuncular smile, saying, “Pleasure to see you, I’m Hubertus-”

“No names, Doctor.”

He had entered the room from a side door at the left, and at the sound of the familiar voice she looked up and saw the familiar figure, the familiar face. His figure and face, not something lighted and made-up for the cameras as she’d feared when she first saw the man behind the desk who might have undergone such tricks of transformation in order to project a youthful image.

But the President was youthful in his own right-a young forty-seven with no wrinkles except those around his eyes when he smiled.

He was smiling now and taking her hand, his grip firm, warm, electric. Electric enough to set off the ringing of her biological time-clock.

Ought to ask the Doctor about that, Jill thought. Dr. Hubertus. She knew that name. Surgeon-General of the United States. Here with her and the President.

He was gesturing toward the furniture grouping at the coffee table. “Please make yourself comfortable,” he said.

Jill seated herself. “Thank you, Mr. President.”

“No formalities, please.” Smiling, he took the chair across from her as Dr. Hubertus moved to the couch. “We don’t have time for that.” He paused, smile dimming. “Or does it matter now?”

“I’m afraid it does,” Jill said. “It matters very much…” She was conscious of something ticking, but not her biological clock. This was more like a time-bomb. A time-bomb ready to explode.

“Then let’s get started. You brought the data?”

“Yes sir.”

“Forget the sir business.” The President eyed her expectantly. “What have you got for me-is it in microchip?”

“I’m your microchip,” Jill said.

Both men raised their eyebrows, but it was Jill who raised her voice, quickly. “Safer this way. Anything that can be stored can be stolen. Copied, duplicated, faked, you name it. I’ve had eight separate task teams on this project, each with different approaches to the problem. Five of them don’t even know the other exist. And I’m the only one with total input from all eight. All the findings, all the projections, all the hard stats.”

The President was staring at her. “Why you?”

“Why not? I have close to eidetic memory. And more important, nobody remembers me at all. I’m low-profile, even in my own field, which makes me right for the job.”

“What if the wrong people got hold of you?”

“Don’t worry, I’d keep my mouth shut.”

“And if they tried to make you talk?”

“I’d shut my mouth harder,” Jill said. “Bit down on the capsule I planted in a crown. Old fashioned, but very effective.”

The President glanced at Dr. Hubertus, who shrugged. “Suppose we get down to essentials,” he said. “We can cover details later on. Right now I’d like to play questions and answers.”

“Ready,” Jill said.

“Cause?”

“Still unknown. Undetectable micro-organisms from an as-yet untraceable source, possibly long-latent in certain mammalian life forms but presently only observed in humans when recently energized by undetermined-”

“Skip it,” said Dr. Hubertus. “We get all that mumbo jumbo from our own witch doctors. Idiots don’t have a clue, probably never will. They still haven’t even been able to pinpoint the source of the AIDS virus, let alone this one. Besides, its source doesn’t matter now. What matters is that it’s here.”

“Here, there and everywhere,” the President said. “That damned, elusive pimpernel.” His light tone was forced, quickly disappearing as he faced Jill. “What are the current stats? Not the press-release stuff-do you have a handle on real figures?”

“Latest computation places the domestic total in the neighborhood of one-and-a-half percent.” Jill leaned forward. “Which doesn’t sound all that threatening until you realize this translates into almost four million people.”

“Former people.” Dr. Hubertus nodded, eyes grim behind glass. “Dead people. Dead-alive. Who stay alive by eating the living. Who in turn become dead, and they in turn re-animate to eat more of the living who-”

“Food-chain,” said the President. “That much we do know. And you don’t need more than grade-school math to figure what happens once the exponential growth factor really kicks in.”

“It may be worse, worldwide,” Jill said. “Hard to project on a global level because we’re still getting denials and censorship. But our medics team estimates domestic cases doubling in three months, doubling again a month later. In China, India, Indonesia, Latin America, the rate of increase could be much greater. If we don’t come up with a solution-”

The President scowled. “How much longer have we got? I’m talking cover-up. Bottom line.”

“A week.”

“That’s all?”

“It’s cropping up all over, and there’s no way of our controlling the spread. And word-of-mouth transmits faster than mouth-to-mouth. Gossip spreads an epidemic of its own.”

“We’ve done our best,” the President said. “But censorship can’t contain it, even if we could jam every broadcast frequency in the world and ban checkout-counter journalism. Not with terminal patients jumping out of deathbeds and morgues running on empty. Of course cemeteries are the real problems. Empty graves are dead giveaways. So far these-these uprisings-seem to take place in rural areas where old-fashioned interments are still common. But once the cities start to go with their Forest Lawns and the kind of places you find in Long Island-” He sighed. “We’ve had meetings with the funeral-director people. They can’t explain why these things are taking place almost at random. It isn’t all that easy to break out of a modern coffin, maybe sealed and imbedded in concrete, then burrow up through six feet of earth to the surface. Even if the grave’s in sandy soil-”

Jill broke in. “You’ve talked to undertakers. We asked seismologists. Underground temblors are common everywhere. Earth moves, rock formations shift enough to splinter cheap caskets, loosen dry soil, even if the quake never damages anything on the surface. So wherever and whenever there’s enough subterranean movement, the necros may claw their way out.”

The President frowned, “Necros?”

Jill shrugged. “It sounds better than ‘ghoul.’”

Dr. Hubertus cleared his throat. “Your people must have made some projections about this thing going public. What happens then?”

“Panic. Hysteria. Right now government control is based on military power, but gunfire won’t kill the dead. And when people lose faith in government they turn to religion, but established beliefs in resurrection won’t offer much comfort. The consensus here is that there’ll be an explosion of crazy cults-Zombies For Jesus, The Church of the Living Dead, that kind of thing, which solves nothing.”

“What does?” said the President.

“Using what we already do know about the situation.”

“Such as?”

“To begin with, studies indicate we may be dealing with two kinds of necros. Type A would be those recently deceased from causes which didn’t involve prolonged mental or physical malfunction. Such cases would still be driven by anthropophagism, and subject to necrosis, but at a much slower rate. We have no verified reports of any answering to this description, but the medics don’t rule out the possibility, if there was no major impairment prior to death or as a result of escaping from interment.

“The big problem is Type B-victims of violence, accidents, crippling disease, or injuries escaping from their graves. They’ll be most vulnerable to necrotic symptoms, and the longer they’ve been buried the faster they’ll decay. Trouble is, it won’t be fast enough. If their numbers increase at the present rate we’ll be dealing with millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, all traumatized by their experiences but a majority simply brain dead, driven only by a mindless hunger to feed on living flesh. You’ve got to take steps to prevent this situation.” Jill paused, then took the plunge. “You’ve got to, or in a few years the earth will be blanketed with bodies-or body parts-of the living dead. The earth and the oceans. Clumps, islands, continents of wriggling corpses-”

Dr. Hubertus gestured his interruption. “Tiffany Thayer forecast it for us sixty years ago. Doctor Arnoldi, published by Julian Messner in 1934.” He nodded. “You think-tank people aren’t the only ones who do their homework. Our own researchers have covered everything in fiction which applies to this reality. Lots of scenarios, but no solutions.”

“That’s why you’re here,” the President said. “Solutions.”

Jill leaned forward once more, “We think we have one.”

“What is it?”

“Cremation,” Jill said.

Dr. Hubertus shook his head. “Won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“It’d take years to build facilities. We’re facing an emergency.”

“Then use emergency facilities,” Jill said. “For starters, there are steel mills closed down all over the country, and industrial plants with blast furnaces. Modify present equipment and you’re in business.”

“That kind of business will stir up some real opposition,” Hubertus told her. “We’d need a lot of secrecy-and security-for such operations. Then there’s environmental pollution. Most of these installations are in large urban areas, and we can’t relocate them.”

“What about military bases? There are hundreds closed and idle.” The President and Dr. Hubertus were listening intently now as Jill continued. “They have everything we need. Airstrips, roads, rail access already in place. Housing and accommodations for personnel. Improvise some temporary crematoriums and build permanent structures as you go along.”

Jill watched the President out of the corner of her eye as she spoke. His profile was ruggedly handsome, granite-jawed. She imagined how it would look carved on Mt. Rushmore. Or, better still, lying on a pillow next to hers.

Dr. Hubertus was clearing his throat. “Sounds like a Nazi death camp.”

“I know, but do we have a choice?”

The President had risen, moving to the wall beside a portrait of Washington. Jill’s thought strayed. Father of his country. Father of my child-

“This-uh-final solution of yours,” the President said. “Did you come up with it yourself?”

“I told you there was input from each of the teams on the project. But I’m the only one with access to all of the data. What I did, you might say, was put the pieces together.”

“And came up with this.” The President flicked his forefinger along the side of the portrait frame. “Just wanted to make sure the picture was straight.”

He glanced at Dr. Hubertus who stood up, moving left to a point beyond the range of Jill’s peripheral vision. “What do you think?” the President said.

“It could work. In which case she’s right about there being no choice.” Dr. Hubertus’ voice sounded from behind her, and Jill started to turn, but the President was nodding, smiling to her, speaking to her.

“Well, then,” he said. “Welcome aboard.”

Jill felt a stinging sensation in her neck, so sharp and so swift that she never had time to bite down on her tooth.

She was dead before she hit the floor.

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