End Of The Year Collection - 2014 Read online

  Leaving one parent behind was a new concept to them, but this departure produced no tears like the ones prior. A melancholy repetition was emerging and, burdened with sadness, they realized they were slowly beginning to overcome this transition. The stars glimmered brightly above them and they realized, despite the brevity of the previous moment spent between a father and his two daughters, that those stars would now produce a conditioned response, and no matter what, they would always be together. They had the moment, they had a memory, and they had Orion’s Belt.

  100 Words on a Tablet of Acetaminophen

  by Nikolus Cook

  What a little headstone

  to rest under—

  a pale sun

  to whitewash an overcast sky.

  A humble button;

  push it through,

  to neaten you. Unfasten

  it from your collar, and be calm;

  the dinner party thins and goes,

  and all there’s left to do is

  quiet the mind.

  My what use, the little bugs,

  skittering in my attic

  to catch the spiders.

  With such light feet,

  they don’t even wake the dust.

  Here it is, a taut drum to drum

  like a god, pulling the cool rain

  on your inner wildfires when you sing;

  a little cloud in itself

  to drift, perhaps, lazily

  between you and the harsh sun.

  Turn this pearl in your palm—

  in the right hands,

  this is a miniature fortune.

  Harris

  by Jonathan Hansen

  Harris heard it before she did.

  A clatter and crash. It echoed across the windswept rubble of Nicollet Avenue. Harris crouched in the shadow of a burnt-out tank and nocked an arrow. Boone did the same, crouching, no thought, just long-engrained reflex. She shifted the big black duffel bag slung across her back. It hung heavy, stuffed to bulging and so, so important.

  Shit. Come on, she thought. We’re almost home.

  But Harris waited, so she waited too.

  The Ssysekian armada may have been gone, gone for months now, the skies over Minneapolis—over the whole world—empty of the great dark discs of their mother ships, but the hard-learned lessons remained.

  You hide. You listen. You wait. Years of memories in her head, from growing up during the invasion, from hiding in the ruins, Harris’s gravelly voice had always been a constant as the Ssysek’s gleaming silver attack ships swooped low, sowing the earth with thundering rows of fire. Then when it’s quiet, you run. In her memories, she could see his scarred face and his crooked nose, his shock of white hair; he was ragged and dirty and alley cat thin. Fighting them didn’t do shit. They won. We lost. And now it’s over. We’re nothing but rats in their house now, kid. He peered out from their hiding spot, the ground booming and shaking, a haze of dust settling over them. You wanna survive, you hide and you wait, then you run. This is what he would say as Ssysek bombs fell like rain and the whole world shook, again and again. That’s all we can do now. Hard-learned lessons.

  So they waited.

  Their breath fogged. The gray fall around them was very quickly sliding into an ashy-snowed winter to come. The wind howled through the broken buildings. The towers creaked and swayed. Papers twirled down into the street like confetti.

  The noise again. Closer.

  Crashing and banging.

  It was coming from across the street, from within the shelled-out ruins of Macy’s. Inside, hazy shafts of sunlight pierced the shadowy gloom and Boone could see wreckage and junk, crumbling stone and dripping water.

  Something dashed through the light and shadow.

  Come on, be nothing, please. We’re so close. Her eyes drifted up, up, up the jagged silhouette of the IDS building looming high overhead. I just want to get home…

  The rush of noise, stumbles and thuds.

  A deer burst from one of the old display windows—a stag. Tattered rags hung from its antlers like clothes on the line. Its white chest heaved with hard breaths. It was slat-ribbed and dusty, its flank scarred. But it still stood tall and regal, still amazing, an old-world refugee. Its hooves click-clacked on the concrete.

  Bambi, Boone gasped and right on top of that, Dinner, swamped by a flood of drooling hunger. She wanted to get home; she needed to get home, the weight of the bag across her back reminded her that she had to get home, but this? This was like winning the lottery. Fresh meat. She wanted to jump up and down and clap.

  She squeaked giddily.

  The stag spotted them across the intersection and froze.

  “Steady,” Harris said and stood, smooth and easy, careful not to spook the beast. She watched him raise his bow, his eyes slit in concentration. Hunger twisted in her guts, warring with a desperate need, with a vicious want. He would make the shot. He always made the shot. He had to make the shot.

  But he grunted as he drew the bow. She saw it shake at the end of his arm. She tried to ignore it. He’s fine. She thought. He’s fine. She tried to brush the worry away, but it nagged at her, all the little things she had noticed lately nagged her, his hacking coughs in the morning, his groaning stretches and all of his aching, sore-ass complaints.

  He’s not a young man anymore.

  She had wanted him to stay home today, but I’ve taken care of you too long to stop now had been his reply. Before the invasion, Harris had worked in a library. I loved that job, the long stacks, all the books, all those different people, he’d often say, his smile faraway. Once, a few years ago, he had shown her the heap of glittering glass and twisted steel on the other side of downtown that used to be his library. He had tried not to cry as he knelt at the ruins because it always made her cry whenever he did, but she had been so little then so she cried anyway. I had a family, his voice edged in tears, remembering that day long ago, the day the Ssysek had come, wreathed in flame and burning down through the atmosphere. I wasn’t there that day and I lost them. He had clutched her then with an iron grip. That’s why we stick together now, understand? She nodded and he had hugged her and then they left the dead library behind. That had been a long time ago and he hadn’t been a young man then either.

  “You ready, kid?” He whispered through clenched teeth.

  She slipped out of the big duffel. It clinked on the concrete and slowly sagged over. She patted its side. Don’t go anywhere.

  The stag stood across Nicollet Avenue from them, standing on the other side of the remnants of an old Army defensive line the Ssysek had blasted to splinters and melted lumps of metal long ago. It pranced. Its white tail flashed and its ears twitched.

  “I’m ready,” Boone whispered.

  She eased her knife from its sheath. The tape that wrapped the handle was frayed and sweat-darkened, but the blade gleamed in her dirty fist. She crouched, her old boots creaking. She wanted this. She needed this. She could almost smell the stag roasting on the spit, could almost hear the fat sizzle and pop. She was practically drooling for a taste.

  She was ready.

  Oh yeah, she was ready.

  Fresh meat.

  The stag would run. From fear and pain and shock, from the rush of adrenaline, the stag would run. Her job was to chase it and bring it down quick. Slit its throat. Harris would catch up—too old to keep up anymore—and they would do the rest together, fast: skin it, gut it, strip the meat, and hope that no dog packs lurked close by or any leopards stalked the skyscraper heights, or worse…

  A horn shattered the silence, a long echoing blast.

  The stag scrambled into a run. It leapt the wreckage and bounded past them.

  They exchanged a wide-eyed look.

  “Hide!” Harris barked. They sprinted around the fire-blackened tank and ducked through the jagged hole blown in its armor. They crawled on hands and knees through the sooty dark, through dangling wires and scorched and scattered bones.

  Horns
echoed in the concrete canyons.

  She scooted back up against Harris. He wrapped a long, wiry arm around her. His scratchy cheek brushed her. “We’re alright, we’re okay,” he whispered. “Shhh-shh-shhh, we’re just fine,” but she could feel his heart hammering in his chest, his body thrumming with nervous energy.

  There were shouts and crashes coming from Macy’s, animal hoots and yips. She couldn’t see the old building from this side of the tank, but she didn’t have to. She knew what was coming, who it was. The noise tumbled out into the open air, suddenly louder, kicking through the rubble and trash that littered the street.

  “They’re hunting the stag,” Boone whispered.

  “I know,” Harris shushed her.

  The horn sounded again. It was long and loud and close.

  A crowd broke over them, a howling pack; they leapt the tank in a sudden rush.

  The Broken.

  Once they had been survivors like her, like Harris and their friends, until the day Ssysek Harvesters had scooped them up and into the endless rise and fall of the shuttles. Everything the Ssysek stole, all their plundered loot—the water, the oil and minerals, the pleading, screaming mass of humanity—it was all taken up into the waiting mother ships.

  And now it was all gone, gone with the Ssysek, carried off to the stars.

  All except the Broken.

  Occasionally, shuttles would land in the ruins, the doors would spin open and people would stagger out, bent and mangled and blinking in the mealy gray light of day. The return of the Broken. Ssysekian Marauders would follow close, herding, clanking in their heavy gray armor and fishbowl helmets sloshing with a yellow liquid. They would jab with long sparking prods, screeching in their weird cicada-chirp language, and the Broken would scatter like frightened dogs, loosed upon the world.

  And now they hunted the ruins, vicious and chasing whatever ran.

  The stag had gotten turned around inside the remains of an old Barnes & Noble. Boone could see it from her hiding spot. She could hear it crashing about. It was trapped behind the coffee bar. It bleated and turned, nostrils flaring and eyes wide. Its antlers tangled in the sagging chandelier.

  The Broken spread out, surrounding, barking and stinking and stomping excitedly. They dragged their rebar spears, the metal sparking in the street. They slipped in through the walls of empty windows, stalking up the aisles between the toppled-over shelves and the rotting piles of rain-pulped books.

  They rushed in.

  They bellowed and hooted, ecstatic. They stabbed their rebar spears over the counter. The big stag kicked and screamed. They tackled it, their weight dragging the beast down. They reared up and hit it with hunks of concrete, again and again, the blood splattering.

  Boone counted twelve. “We should go,” she whispered. They had lost the stag—there was no need to stay.

  “Quiet,” Harris shushed her again. “Wait.”

  Boone had always been quick with her blade. Growing up she’d had to be. Ssysekian Marauders were tough, and in the narrow confines of the ruins they were pure murder machines, but underneath their armor, they were just flesh. A quick jab between their armor plates and the skin would part with a soft plop, like a lanced boil, spewing a piss-warm spray and a choking sulfur stink. Then they would screech and thrash. Their eye-stalks would wilt and their oily skin would dry and crack and seep a thick black gunk as their bodies contorted and their cries trailed off into agonized, spitting clicks.

  It was easy, if you were quick.

  Boone had killed more than her share over the years.

  And when she did, she left their corpses to be found by their kind. She had survived the reprisals too, hunkered down in the ruins, hiding from the monstrous Tick-tock hunters and the orbital bombardments that pounded the city. She had outlasted it all. And then finally, she had stood in the rubble and watched the ships fly away. She had felt the deep bass thrum of their engines press against her, spiraling up whirls of dust.

  She was a survivor.

  So she wasn’t afraid of a few Broken. She had faced them before, dangerous, yeah, especially in large packs, but in the end, nothing but animals. She could take four, maybe, if she was fast. Maybe more, if she was lucky and the ground favored her. Yeah, she flexed her fingers, Four, easy. But twelve? Out in the open?

  The pack huddled around the stag, the big ones close in, the small ones jostling around the edges. The stag quivered and jerked and bled. They slurped and grunted and muttered and munched, dressed in tattered skins and sun-faded rags and the remnants of filthy suits. They were twisted and hobbled, all of them maimed and scarred and grafted with tangles of strange alien metal. They were all armed with rock and rusty rebar.

  The biggest one was bald and wore a broken-horned helmet. His back was to Boone. It was a mess of scars and metal and matted with coarse curls of gray hair from his shoulders to his dirty ass crack. He squatted in the middle of the group and ate slow and assured. The others gave him plenty of space.

  Twelve was too many.

  “Let’s go,” Boone whispered, urgent need wrapping her, beginning to choke her.

  Harris shushed her.

  She had to get home. Her head was pounding. She swallowed, her throat etched with nervous acid. They can’t find us. We have to get home. She still heard Tonya in her nightmares, the terrified screaming as a pack of Broken dragged her from her hiding spot. Tonya had screamed and screamed and she didn’t stop until they had smashed her head in with a hunk of concrete. Boone could still hear the wet splat. She balled her hands into fists. I have to get home. I have to. I can’t get caught out here. I have…

  “The bag,” she gasped. “Oh, shit, Harris! The bag. I left it…”

  He shushed her again, a harsh hissing slice of noise, a little too loud.

  A blood-streaked head popped up out of the huddle.

  They both froze.

  The man was butt-chinned and wide-nosed beneath a rat’s nest of black hair salted with gray. An old tie draped his bare chest and bloodstained shirtsleeves bunched up at his wrists. He stared around slow and suspicious. Then he nudged Horn-head, who turned on his haunches and looked around, squinty-eyed, and slowly chewing, his chin dribbling a gory red. A moment later, he shrugged and the duo sank back into the huddle.

  Boone exhaled relief.

  “They know we’re here,” Harris said.

  “What? No, I don’t—”

  “Watch.”

  She did. She watched them snuffle and gnaw on sloppy, bloody fistfuls. She watched close and realized their eating had slowed. Then she saw their eyes, the sidelong glances and the slow and careful hands dragging their rebar spears up off the concrete.

  “Shit.”

  “Get the bag,” Harris said, “and keep going. The Bancorp building is right behind us across the street. Go inside and up the escalators. Cut across the skyway to Macy’s and then over the Nicollet skyway and into the IDS and…”

  “No,” she said.

  “…get home.”

  “No!”

  “I’ll slow ‘em down.”

  “No!”

  He put a hand on her shoulder, “Boone, I’ll catch up.”

  She gasped.

  A sudden crash of memory. What do we call it? Danny’s voice in her head. She remembered him touching tiny toes, tiny fingers, his easy smile and blue-blue eyes, his hands so rough, his touch so soft, brushing dishwater hair from her eyes. I’ll catch up, he had assured her. She remembered chaos that day, far south of the Cities, and a seemingly endless line of refugees moving down I-35 like a sludgy river. She remembered hiding in a pile of smoking wreckage that used to be a Cabellas and hearing the deep hammer-blow booms of the Army’s last ditch efforts, their cannons blooming fire. But most of all, she remembered the massive Ssysek Harvesters, still coming, their big treads tearing up the countryside, a storm of churned earth and snatching tentacles coming for them. Don’t worry. It was the last thing Danny had ever said to her. I’ll catch up.

  “
We stick together,” she spat now, shaking Harris off.

  Bam, bam, bam. A rhythmic banging, loud and echoing.

  Boone and Harris both stopped cold.

  Bam, bam, bam. Horn-head was rapping the tile with his rebar. It was tipped with a big hunk of concrete. Bam, bam, bam. The others joined in, spears ringing on metal and water-warped wood. Bam, bam, bam. The Pack turned around as one and faced the tank with bloody, jagged-tooth grins. Bam, bam, bam.

  Harris gave her a hard look. “Don’t wait for me.”

  He shoved past her, out into the street.

  The Broken surged up together, spears rattling. One woman rushed forward, ruddy and blonde and pig-faced. She was wearing a filthy, oversized purple shirt with a big number seven across the front. It hung on her like a blood-drenched dress.

  She screamed and threw her spear.

  Harris leaned to one side.

  The spear clanged off the tank and bounced away.

  He straightened, nocked an arrow from the quiver on his hip. He drew his bow and released. Jersey-dress yelped. She stumbled and fell, a shaft sticking out of her thigh. He nocked another and fired. He drew a third, aimed and released.

  The Broken scattered.

  “Run, Boone!”

  She burst out of the tank and rushed around its scorched sides. Harris’ bow sang behind her. She heard a pained howl. “Come on!” She yelled, scooping up the duffel and throwing it over her shoulder as she ran. She leap broken planters spilling dead trees and dry soil and threaded the stone garden that littered the front of the building. A spear flew past her, scraping a white chalk line across a chunk of decorative granite. She dived in the lobby door, rolling on a carpet of dead leaves. The ceiling soared above her, open to the second floor, and a pair of mangled escalators climbed up to the balcony.

  She staggered to her feet and started climbing.