The girl stood at the edge, but there were no creatures on this roof, and she didn’t look like she was jumping. She smiled at him.
“You came. I knew you would come.”
“Who are you?”
“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re finally here.” She moved closer. He reached out to touch her face. Even though he knew she was just a projection on his retina, he could swear he could feel her skin. So soft, so warm.
“This is a horrible place,” she said, a tear dripping down her cheek. “You can see that, can’t you?”
“Yes. . . .”
“That’s why I need you to save me.”
Darren laughed. He was amazed they put this amount of programming into an NPC. Unless of course she was the kind of NPC around whom the plot turned. Not just an extra but a principal in the story. How ironic if he came across a key element of the game that his parents had missed!
“Save you how?” he asked, ready to play along.
She didn’t answer him right away. Instead, she leaned close and kissed him.
He knew it was virtual. He knew it couldn’t be happening, but it didn’t stop him from reacting as if it were real. And he wanted more.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” she whispered in his ear, and he could feel her breath as she did. “Your mind wants to tell you that this is pretend . . . but you don’t have to listen. And when you stop listening . . . that’s when it really gets fun.”
And what she did to him next . . . He knew it wasn’t happening anywhere else but in his head, but that didn’t matter. Because it was far more real than anything that had ever happened to him in his life.
• • •
He was hooked—but in a very different way from his parents. Day after day he would enter the game, leave his parents to fight monsters, and run off to find the silver girl. He would even kill monsters himself if he had to—but only to protect her. He had to admit, though, that the most satisfying thing was killing off other player characters. They would see him there, in his armor and with his laser cannon. They would think he was an ally, but then he would turn on them with a blast to the head. He would watch their digital brains explode and splatter the scenery. Their avatars would go down, and the rats would come. He wouldn’t even take their belongings. He wasn’t there to scavenge. His victory was in their fall. It could have gone on like that if the silver girl—whose name he still did not know—hadn’t stopped it.
“They come back,” she told him. “You can kill them, but they always come back. And every time they do, the game creates a hundred new monsters to kill those of us who can’t get out.”
Then, around a smoky corner of Armageddon, two players came. Darren recognized them right away.
“What the hell are you doing?” his father shouted at him. “Are you still wasting time with that NPC?”
“So what?” said his mother. “He’s not in the way, and he’s enjoying the game. Leave him alone.”
“He’s not playing right!” said his father.
But his father’s attention turned to a gaggle of decomposing attackers. His parents began firing on them, shouting orders to each other—and just like the silver girl said, more kept coming and coming.
“You see how it is?” she said.
When Darren looked at her again, her eyes were now as bright silver-blue as her hair. There was an intensity in her that he could only guess at. He wanted some of that intensity for himself. He craved it. He’d do anything for it.
“Save me,” she said, as she had on the first day. “You know what you have to do.”
Yes, he did know.
When he removed the headset, it took a few moments to adjust to the “real” world. His parents were sitting there, immersed in their battle. He was almost startled to see how scrawny and malnourished they were. Without him feeding them, had they eaten at all?
He found what he was looking for in the kitchen and returned to the living room. He began with his father, figuring he might put up the biggest fight. But he didn’t even gasp as the carving knife slipped between his ribs and into his heart. Neither of them saw it coming. How could they, when they were more interested in the zombie attack?
A minute later the zombies killed his parents’ unmanned avatars, and they were being devoured by rats. But at least these players would not be returning to the game.
Darren reached for his headset, ready to return to the girl, but her voice called out from the TV. “No!”
He turned to see the silver girl peering out at him from the TV screen. She was only pixels now. He touched the screen but couldn’t get through to her. This wouldn’t do. He longed for her to be injected right into his optic nerves. Why couldn’t he? Why would she say no?
“They’re not the only ones,” she told him. “As long as there are still player characters, I won’t be safe.”
“And when they’re all gone?” Darren asked.
“Then it’s just you and me.”
He touched his fingers to the surface of the screen, and she raised her fingers to touch his. He could almost feel her fingertips. Almost. He looked at the headset in his other hand. If he put it on, he knew she would run from him. He’d spend a lifetime searching for her in that world. The only way to get her back was to take on this mission. He dropped the headset to the bloody floor. There was work to do.
The night was chilly, so Darren put on a jacket. He could hear the reports of machine guns, laser fire, and commands being shouted in more than one home on his street. Those noises, he knew, would lead him to where he needed to go. Not just tonight, but tomorrow and all the days beyond. Funny how his knife, still dripping blood, was a far more effective weapon than a laser cannon.
“PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON’T HURT US!”
“SOMEONE! ANYONE! HELP US!”
Tonight, in Darren’s world, he’d be racking up the points.
And in the silver girl’s world, the rats would be feasting.
Neal Shusterman is the New York Times bestselling author of over thirty novels for teens, including the Unwind Dystology, the Skinjacker Trilogy, The Schwa Was Here, and Challenger Deep, winner of the National Book Award. He has collaborated with his son Brendan Shusterman numerous times—including a story appearing in Shaun Hutchinson’s Violent Ends story collection, as well as a novella in UnBound, a collection of tales in the Unwind world. Brendan also created the illustrations for Challenger Deep, and is hard at work on his debut novel.
Website: storyman.com
Twitter: @NealShusterman
Facebook: facebook.com/nealshusterman
* * *
Falling into Darkness
MARGE SIMON
* * *
The House of Night Hospital
Entry
where all is white
specters line the stairs—
those who gasped last their breath
on sweat damp sheets
Surgery
where knives slashed flesh
so many lives unsaved
Corridors
funeral wreaths hang on doors
nurses walk the hallways
knives tucked in belts
Chapel
milky eyed mourners
hands trembling
heads bowed in perpetual prayer
twining rosaries
in bony fingers
Morgue
Boxed cubicles like
office drawers,
cold as hell
can’t tell one
from the other
without a
not-so-sexy
toe tag.
Exit
No way out
but down.
Silver Sandals
In October they disappear. . . .
pretty girls in silver sandals
skin tattooed with moon and stars
tattered clothes left by the highway
screams unheard
in the house far from
the city
bodies strung across the ceiling
spirits trapped in bottles waiting
offerings for the souls unborn
crimson spatters on the flooring
grimoires line the crooked shelves
pretty girls with no release from
spells unknown
Hitchhiker’s Home
Mirrors broken
in a storm of hate
shards glimmer
in a slate dark sky
innocence lost
when she left
laughter silenced
by a drifter’s blade
narrow hallways
overseen by the eyes
of obscure relatives
in gilded frames
ghosts wander
upstairs and down
cries only their mothers
hear in nightmares
once she thumbed a ride
hoping for freedom
but they brought
her back home.
Zombie Symptoms
Suzanne didn’t notice it coming on,
as indeed none of the infected do,
during the first eight hours.
It’s a matter of incubation time,
for the virus to penetrate the system.
There’s the headache, then fever,
an unaccustomed glow in the eyes.
She felt a bit flushed,
thought it might be her sinuses,
or perhaps a little cold, until she
realized her rings had fallen off
the bones of her left hand.
After that point, Suzanne forgot
about what she was wearing,
didn’t mind the panic in the faces
of those she passed on the streets.
In her eyes, an ephemeral light,
and her stomach screamed for flesh.
Voodoo Queen
Blood colors her hat
of haute couture style,
you’ll find her at market
wearing a smile.
She’s shopping for charms
and desirable potions
all sorts of the nastiest,
smelliest lotions,
whether once human
but probably not.
She’s frequently sought,
for she’s one of the best,
so the zombies attest,
with conditions severe,
her wares give their skin
a healthy veneer.
Huffing
you can’t jail a guy
for stealing a stack
of little brown sacks
from the jiffy store
he got his mother’s can of
oven cleaner from that dark space
under the sink buried
inside that extra dishpan
she never saw him
stick it under his new leather jacket
& take it off down the street to
Joe-Bob’s garage where
they pass the can around
but he can’t stop huffing
until the shadow spiders came
not for any others just for him
bebopping swaydancing inside his eyes
nobody could reach him after that
& nobody wanted to
he just sits there
forever blown away
he can’t remember
& he won’t care
so report him for
copping a bunch of brown sacks
why don’t you.
Marge Simon lives in Ocala, Florida, and is married to Bruce Boston. Her works appear in publications such as Daily Science Fiction magazine, Pedestal, and Dreams & Nightmares. She edits a column, “Blood & Spades: Poets of the Dark Side,” for the HWA newsletter and serves as chair of the board of trustees. She won the Strange Horizons Readers’ Choice Award, the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Dwarf Stars Award, and the Elgin Award for best poetry collection. She has won three Bram Stoker Awards for superior work in poetry, two first-place Rhysling Awards, and the Grand Master Award from the SFPA. In addition to her poetry she has published two prose collections: Christina’s World and Like Birds in the Rain. Her poems appear in Qualia Nous, A Darke Phantastique, the Spectral Realms, and Chiral Mad 3.
Website: margesimon.com
Facebook: facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000459397561
* * *
What Happens When the Heart Just Stops
CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN
* * *
Kayah Fallon stood in the doorway to her bedroom, eyes wide, frozen to the spot, afraid she was watching her mother die. Details whispered at the edges of her peripheral vision—the open dresser drawer, the tumble of half-folded laundry, the smell of vomit—but she could not tear her gaze away from the pain etched upon her mother’s face.
“Kai?” her mother rasped, and the word snapped Kayah from her paralysis.
She rushed across the room and knelt beside her mother. Naira Fallon lay with one leg folded underneath her. Halfway to sitting, she clung tightly to the mess of bedclothes tangled at the foot of her daughter’s bed, as though she’d been trying to rise but hadn’t quite managed it. Some of the fresh laundry had spilled onto her lap, and the rest had tumbled to the floor with the basket.
Naira tried to speak again but managed only a wheeze.
“What happened?” Kayah asked, hating the fear in her own voice. “Come on, lay down.” She took her mother’s right arm—the one propped on the bed—and found that her fingers were fisted in a knot of blanket. “Let go, Mom. Lay down.”
But Naira seemed unable to unclench her fist. She groaned and her breath came in quick, hitching gasps.
“It hurts to breathe,” Naira said.
Kayah looked around the room as if some solution—some miracle balm—might suddenly present itself. It did not. The pitiful painkillers in the meds cabinet would do nothing for whatever the hell this was.
“Where does it hurt?” Kayah asked. Stupid question. Automatic.
“My back. My chest . . . feels like a bear hug that won’t . . . let go.”
Again, Kayah tried to get her to lie down. She couldn’t think of anything else to do. Naira’s skin was clammy with cold sweat, and Kayah’s brain started to pull together pieces of a puzzle she hadn’t realized needed solving until now. The last couple of afternoons, coming home from her job as a seamstress, Naira had complained about pain in her back and side. She had pulled muscles on the job before, and this had not seemed much different, though a little more painful. The discomfort had made Naira’s sleep uneasy, and this morning she’d been short of breath. Kayah had demanded she stay home and rest, even if Naira missing work might mean a day or two when they wouldn’t have enough to eat. The disagreement had turned to a squabble, and the last thing Kayah had said to her mother that morning had been curt and unkind. The memory weighed on her.
Now Kayah glared at the spilled laundry as if it were her enemy. Her mother had been restless. Washed both the city soot and the dirt and manure of the farm from her daughter’s clothes. Tried to clean Kayah’s room and get the laundry folded and put away. And she’d been struck down.
Heart attack, Kayah thought. It has to be.
Which meant there wasn’t a damn thing she could do for her mother here in their apartment. Like some trigger had been pulled inside her, Kayah tore from her mother’s side and raced from the room. The butchers at the Emergency sometimes did more harm than good; everyone knew that. But right now they were Naira’s only hope.
The apartment consisted of five rooms—kitchen, common room, bathroom, and two bedrooms—on the fourth floor of a dingy, half-empty building. Once there had been an elevator, but it had rusted so badly the smell filled the corridors, and it hadn’t run since some time before Kayah had been born. Now there were only the stairs, and there was no way that her mother would be able to descend on her own, nor could Kayah carry her. She stood in the co
mmon room, a moment of indecision halting her as she glanced at the door and tried to imagine some way to drag her mother down four flights.
Impossible.
Her little sister, Joli, was two floors up, being looked after by Mimi Cheney. The old woman loved taking care of the seven-year-old while Naira and Kayah were at work, and Joli often stayed with Mimi until dinner was ready. But there would be no dinner tonight.
Kayah darted to the corner of the living room, where cracked windows looked down on the street, long unrepaired. The late afternoon sun cast long shadows, throwing much of the road below into darkness. But she heard a whoop of amusement and then a low bark of derisive laughter, and she went to the west facing window.
In the alley below, half a dozen street kids were gathered around, encouraging the efforts of a seventh boy, who stood atop a small tower of rusty barrels, spray-painting a design that would’ve been lovely if the words hadn’t been obscene. Even with the afternoon shadows Kayah recognized most of the kids. Ever since the Cloaks first appeared, people tended to stick to their own neighborhoods. She might not roam the streets with them, but she knew their names.
She had to bang the frame to get the window to give way, and the warped wood shrieked as she dragged it upward. The late summer afternoon had turned cool and the breeze chilled her, despite the blood rushing to her face and the way her heart hammered in her chest. She stuck her head out the window.
“Quinney!” she shouted.
They all turned to look, four boys and three girls, all of them skids. Street kids. Skid marks. The patch left on the ground when their parents tore out of town. Some of their parents had been taken rather than left, but the effect was the same. They were all orphans in one way or another.
Tynan, the boy atop the rusty barrels, twisted around to glance up at her, lost his balance, and fell back against the spray-painted wall before crashing down among the toppling barrels.
The rest of them fell about, laughing at Tynan. All except for Quinney, the tall, ghostly pale, ginger boy they all followed. In his tattered denim and a ragged brown canvas jacket that had once been waterproof, he looked every inch the scavenger and future thug. And maybe he was both, but right then Kayah needed him.