"Revenge of the Roach King"

Revenge of the Roach King

(originally published in The Blackest Death II)

C. Dennis Moore

I pulled up outside my brother's building the night after he called. He'd said the noises were finally too much for him. Said he couldn't sleep with the constant scritching and scratching in the walls and over the floors. The heat was bad enough, but those sounds were likely to drive a man crazy. He said as long as I was coming over anyway--we did have a funeral to discuss--could I bring my equipment?

My brother's building was a dump. I'd only been there once before and I must have forgotten what a hole it was. I went in the front door, stepped over a puddle of . . . something, and climbed the stairs, passed a door covered in police tape, and knocked on Jerry's door. When he let me in, I was reluctant to take the offered seat--who knew what was living in that couch--and instead walked around inspecting the place.

Jerry's kitchen, really just a sink, stove, and refrigerator along a far wall of the one-room apartment, was a haven for the bastards, trash can full, dirty dishes on the counter, some with food dried onto them, open cans half-full of sticky, sugary bait for the little things. I wanted to tell him he probably wouldn't attract them like he did if he'd just clean the place up a little, but in the end, in a place like this, I knew that wasn't true. This building was infested and Jerry emptying his trash and wiping off the counter wasn't going to change that.

"I can take care of the problem in here," I told him, "but you really probably ought to get the landlord to call somebody."

"You're somebody."

"I'm not on the clock. This is a favor. I'm only here so we can decide what we want to do with our mother."

"Later," he said, "just get rid of them, will you? I can't take them anymore. If it's money, I got some money, I'll pay you."

"It's not that, it's just you should get the owner involved. It's his building, make him foot the bill."

"Landlord's a jackass. For me, okay?"

"Alright," I said. "I'll start in here, then check the basement, that's a common area, while you think about how you want to go on mom's funeral." I took a shaker of boric acid powder from my pocket and explained to him that it's harmless to people, but it's about as effective as you can get when dealing with cockroaches.

I put some behind his trash can, sending a small wave of roaches scurrying under the refrigerator, away from the light. I tried to stomp them all, but only managed to get two. A few things fell from the overflowing trash can, bits of crumpled paper and a couple of empty beer cans. Roaches love beer, I don't know why. I put them back, shoved the trash down further.

I sprinkled more around the sink, and was moving away from the "kitchen", around the room. When I reached the closet and was about to open the door to put the powder in there, Jerry quickly said, "What are you doing?"

"Cool dark place," I said, indicating the closet. "One of the first places to check."

"Oh, you don't need to worry about the closet."

Now I was curious. Was he hiding something? I wanted to ask, but with my little brother, I figured that's here he kept his weed.

* * *

Let's face it, exterminator isn't a glamorous job, some of us go into it because we hate them that much. What Jerry was dealing with was cockroaches, and anyone who's ever had a problem with them can tell you, they are one of the most persistent of insects, difficult to get rid of, more difficult still to keep out once they're gone.

The basement turned out to be a wash. I found nothing down there except a washer and dryer that probably didn't even work. I sprinkled boric acid powder into the corners and along the walls anyway.

The problem remained of finding the nest. I decided to return upstairs to Jerry's apartment, but first I made another circuit of the basement, just to double check. On the way to Jerry's door, I passed the taped-off apartment again. I'd have to ask about that one.

I found Jerry in his closet, shoving something aside, cursing, and tumbling over something, like he wanted to get whatever was in there out of sight before I saw it.

Unless it was a giant cockroach, I wasn't interested in any of Jerry's dirty laundry.

"Did you find them?" he asked, shutting the closet door and turning to face me again. Whatever was in that closet, his face was all the admission anyone would need; it was something good, and he didn't want anyone else to get it. Yeah, I thought, probably his weed.

"There's more to it than that," I said. "Besides, I didn't find anything in the basement. What's in that taped-off apartment?" I asked, figuring an undisturbed room, dark and empty, might just be the perfect place for a nest

"Um, I don't know," he said.

"I wonder if I should talk to the landlord about checking it out for infestation."

"You can talk to him but he won't let you in. It's sealed off for a reason."

"I know that. But you let a bug problem get out of hand and it can become a health hazard. I'm not saying I wanna inspect a crime scene--", that was obviously the reason for the tape, whatever the crime was. Murder was my guess, but that's nothing new in this town. "--I'm just saying I want to check for a nest. I mean so far I've only seen roaches in your apartment. Far as I can tell, you're the only one with an obvious problem, but that can't be because roaches, once they get in, they breed and they infest the building. If I'm gonna get rid of them, I need to find out where they're coming from."

"Can you just get rid of them, please? I can't help you with that apartment, just forget that one, and please find them and kill them."

I'd already spent more time in this building tonight than I wanted to.

"They're all over this place and I can't take 'em," he said. "I can't even sleep at night."

"I'm not doubting they're here," I said. I wanted to tell him the big surprise would be if a dump like this didn't have bugs, but instead I said, "Before I go door to door asking to check for nests, I think we should discuss mom. She said she wanted to be cremated, but I just don't know if I can--."

"Don't worry about the funeral," he said. "I got it covered."

His eyes flashed to the closet, I don't even think he noticed it, and I wondered after all just what was in there.

"I'd really just as soon discuss it first, if you don't mind."

His reluctance shone through, but he agreed.

* * *

There was no way I was knocking on any doors anyway, not until we'd settled the matter. I came here tonight for our mother's funeral and dammit we were going to get it out of the way. What did he think, that I just wandered around town at night looking for infestations to exterminate? I was doing him a favor here, the least he could do was hear me out.

So we settled it. Our mother wanted to be cremated, but neither of us wanted to do that deed just yet. We thought maybe we'd have a viewing first, a nice affair like she deserved with all her family and friends, a last chance to see her. We could have her cremated afterward, couldn't we? The only problem I could see was the cost. She hadn't left much in her will, barely enough to cover the costs of a bottom-dollar funeral, a ten-spot away from a pine-box affair, but we were giving her better than that. If we could afford it.

By my watch it was after nine when I started knocking on doors. Still fairly early, so I wasn't worried about waking anyone, but late enough I was disturbing them during dinner. I'd have to interrupt a few sitcom reruns, probably, but other than that, I figured the tenants wouldn't mind too much in helping to get rid of the bug problem.

Shows what I know.

The first door I came to was answered by an old man in a dirty tank top who thought I was the police and slammed the door in my face, yelling, "I didn't hear anything, leave me alone."

The next door was different, but I still didn't get in. I'm not surprised, not many people, especially in a neighborhood like this one, are going to let a stranger in this late at night, no matter who he says he is, or what he wants. I could have come to the door bleeding and half-dead and I still wouldn't have made it inside. From the few apartments I'd caught glimpses of from the door, they didn't look half as bad as Jerry's so chances were none of them were being used as nests.

I tried three more apartments, all unsuccessfully. I stood in the hall, looking at that taped apartment door, covered in strips of yellow. Then I went down to the entryway.

I went to the row of mailboxes and found the one I wanted. Whatever'd happened in the cordoned apartment, no one had changed the mailbox label. Apartment 3B was rented to Ronnie Gallagher. As I read the name, a sense of deja vu came over me. I knew I'd seen that name before, and I stood there trying to force the memory, to remember where I'd seen it. Then it hit me, it had been written on something in Jerry's trash can. Ronnie G., it said. Had to be the same guy. But so what? What was I trying to prove?

Only that Jerry'd lied to me. He might not know what happened to Ronnie, and probably he didn't, not everything, but if he'd known the man, he had to know something, right?

Again, so what? I know, it was no big deal, none of my business. His life is his, I told myself. I don't tell him everything.

But dammit, if he'd known the man was dead, he could have just said it.

"Yeah, guy I know used to live there. He died, though."

Simple, right? But he hadn't said that. He'd lied and said he didn't know anything.

Why?

I didn't know, but now that it was on my mind, the question was burning into me and I wanted to find out, wanted it more than I wanted to find the nest and get out of here, even, because I could tell already that I was on to something.

* * *

So I did a little lying of my own. I was glad I'd worn a button up shirt because they look more professional when you're pretending to be a cop.

The first floor apartments were out of the question, I'd already knocked on them, so I climbed the stairs, went to the door furthest down the hall, and asked if I could speak to them about Ronnie Gallagher.

"We already talked to you guys," the old woman said when she opened the door. "There's nothing else to tell. Go away."

"Ma'am," I said, putting my foot in the door before she closed it, "we're just here to make sure we've got it all straight. People remember things over time, you know, we just want to get all the facts we can."

"Well if you want all the facts," she said, "you ask that man down there." She motioned with her head. I turned around and saw she was looking at Jerry's door.

"Does Mr. Boyer know what happened?"

"He ought to," she said. "He was there. I heard 'em come in together that night. Out all night at the bars, I'd say. Both of 'em so drunk it's a wonder they got up the stairs."

"I see. So then, when it happened--."

"When he was killed."

"Yes," I said, "when Mr. Gallagher died, was Mr. Boyer actually in the apartment with him? Or did they part company before that?"

"'Part company'? Where you from? No, no, they went into that man's place together. Don't ask me what they was doing, I mind my own business around here. But it was probably something queer, you know I always said there was something wrong with those two, I bet they was doing something nasty together."

"Fine, thank you, I think we've got enough for now."

I pulled my foot back, but I guess she wasn't finished.

"You tell him," she said, "nothing good comes from that kind of sin. He's going to hell, you just wait and see."

I nodded, said thank you again, and backed away.

Then I stopped and went back to her to ask, "Ma'am, have you had any problems lately with pests? Cockroaches? Anything?"

"Of course not," she almost cried, "I keep a clean house, you better believe that. I wouldn't let nothing like that into my place, who are you talking to?"

I turned around and let her keep going as I left. I glanced down, then, and saw it.

A cockroach scurried under the door to Ronnie's apartment.

I stood in front of it, wondering what was on the other side, put my ear to the door to see if I could hear anything, then realized it would have to be one huge nest for me to hear it, and with the former occupant dead, there wouldn't be any other sounds in there.

But there was.

As hard as it was to believe, I did hear something, a scraping, and a low hum. I couldn't say what the noises were, but whatever, they sure as anything shouldn't have been there, because this apartment was not only empty, but sealed off as well.

I looked around, looked at everything, waiting for an idea to come to me. Then I saw the stairs leading up, I glanced out a hallway window to the street, and there it was.

I took off up the stairs, climbed past the third and fourth floors, and got outside onto the roof. From here, I had to figure out which direction I was looking for--Ronnie and Jerry's apartments were on the left when you came in the front door--and when I was oriented I went to the fire escape.

Now, this might be a little risky because the fire escape that covered Ronnie's window, would probably be the same one that ran in front of Jerry's and when I left his apartment last he'd been standing in front of the window. If I was quiet and careful enough, he might not notice me.

Unless he was still standing at the window.

The night was hot, no breeze blew nor did any clouds threaten rain. It was one of those summer nights a person suffers through in bed, tossing and turning, searching for the cool spot on the sheet, the cool side of the pillow, the few seconds of air as the fan sweeps past.

The streets were about as empty as they ever got.

Strange for the city to be so quiet. Like everyone knew something was coming, and they were trying to stay out of it. Even the prostitutes had abandoned their posts tonight. The junkies had stayed home. The bums had found some other alley to live in for the night.

From here it was four stories to the second floor. As I made my way past the fifth and fourth floors, I was trying to make out from above where I was in relation to Jerry's and Ronnie's apartments, trying to figure out which one I would pass first. On the third floor, I had it pretty much figured out. On the second floor, I had to stop before I went in front of Jerry's window.

It figured I'd have to cross his to get to the one I wanted.

I tried to use the light from inside to tell if he was standing in front of the window, or if he was further inside. But even if he was back further in the room, he could still be watching out the window. How could I be sure?

Then I heard something I hoped was coming from his room and not from next door, or above, or from anywhere else in the building. A toilet flushed. I prayed it was Jerry's as I leaped across the fire escape, past his window, and stopped in front of Ronnie's. I didn't bother to look inside and see if Jerry was there or not, I just wanted to get across.

I cupped my hands over the glass and tried to see inside the supposedly empty apartment.

I would never be able to unsee what I'd seen.

Instead of an empty apartment with a few bugs crawling across the floor, I saw that black room, every inch of it moving, writhing and shifting as if the walls and floor were alive, but it wasn't the room that was moving. It was the bugs. They filled the room. I'd never seen so many damn bugs all at once, and I had to stand a second staring and it and force myself to breath.

It was 10:30 by that time and the whole world was dark, but I saw their black and brown bodies reflecting in the streetlight. Seeing them like that, with something so innocuous as a streetlight mingling with their wretched little selves somehow made the scene more grotesque.

My pathetic little shaker of boric acid powder wasn't gong to do any good in here.

I backed away from the glass.

Before I could turn from the window, though, I saw something even worse.

There was something under the bugs, something big and sprawled and when a naked knee raised up, followed by a shoulder and then a head as the body sat up, I wanted to scream.

The body stood. Bugs fell from it, clattering onto their brothers in the dark before rejoining the scurrying mass on the floor. The streetlight shone on the body's eyes, and those eyes were directed at me. The body took a step and I could already feel its fingers grabbing my shirt collar, even through the window and across the room I knew what it would feel like.

I darted away, pounded on Jerry's window, screaming "Let me in! Open up! Jerry, open the window!"

I spotted him kneeling in the closet, and when he heard me, he leapt up, slammed the door, and ran to the window.

"What is it?" he called through the glass.

"Open the fucking window!" I yelled again.

I heard Ronnie's window go up.

Jerry got the lock on his own window undone and hauled up the pane.

Before ducking inside I glanced over. The foot was on the fire escape, one hand curled around the ledge to pull himself out.

I threw myself into Jerry's apartment, telling him, "Close it, close it!"

He did, then locked it again, and before he could even step away, the naked man was at the window, smiling in. His eyes found Jerry and his grin went evil, as if he knew a secret about the man and was glad to tell it to anyone who'd listen.

"Shit," Jerry said.

The man outside turned his head toward Ronnie's apartment and we heard the bugs over there growing angry, loud, clattering over the floor as they hurried toward us. I expected to see them racing under the door, gathering to cover and eat us. Roaches will eat anything.

Jerry turned toward the sound, then back to the window and I heard him say, in a very frightened and breaking voice, "Ronnie? Please."

I looked at the man outside, and echoed Jerry.

"Ronnie? Gallagher? I thought he was dead."

Jerry looked back at me, and Ronnie followed, staring at me with dead eyes and his wicked grin. Jerry's face was the opposite, slack with fear, twitching around the mouth and eyes, ready to cry with dread.

"What did you do?" I asked Jerry.

Before he could answer, the walls began to crack. Roaches spilled from them like water, out of the walls, and down them, crawling for the floor. I had a second to wonder where they'd go once they got there, for me or Jerry, before I regained my senses, got to my feet, and grabbed Jerry's shirt.

I hauled him toward the door, threw it open, ready to get downstairs and outside, out of this place, and away. I didn't know how soon I could get the police here, but I was gonna find out.

We got as far as the hallway.

When I opened the door and made for the stairs, I saw the hall was full of bugs, too. The sound they made clacking over the floor, and worse, over each other, made my stomach turn.

From down the hall, the old woman I'd talked to earlier opened her door and yelled, "What the hell is all this noise out here? What in the world is going on?" But when she got out there and saw what it was, she screamed, flew back into her apartment, and slammed the door.

"Call the police!" I yelled, knowing she wouldn't. You live in a neighborhood like this, you see all the bad stuff that goes down day to day, and you slowly lose faith in the ones who are supposed to take care of you.

I heard something slam, then rattle behind me, and I turned in time to see Ronnie throw a punch at the window. His fist cracked the glass. Another punch and he'd shatter it. Jerry and I didn't have much choice; no matter how horrible their crunching bodies were going to sound and feel under our heels, we had to get out of here.

I needed to think, and I desperately wanted to know what the hell was going on.

"Come on." I grabbed Jerry and pulled him out. He shook loose and ran back into the apartment, nearly slipping on the moving bodies under his feet. I wondered what the hell he'd gone back inside for, until I saw him head for the closet. He pulled it open, sweeping a pile of roaches out of the way. They gathered, fell over each other, and kept on crawling, oblivious. Jerry stepped into the closet and came back out with a suitcase in each hand.

He glanced over at Ronnie who was climbing in through the open pane. I half expected rain and thunder to start any second, adding to the ominous mood, but outside was calm and dark. Ronnie set his foot on the floor and the roaches parted for him.

I looked at him, then at Jerry. The last ten seconds had seemed to take minutes. The bugs were still spilling from the cracks in the wall, as well as coming now from under Ronnie's apartment door. The hallway was flooded with them, a glistening wave of shiny bodies.

"Let's go," I yelled at Jerry. He'd stopped in the middle of the room and was staring at Ronnie, but my voice brought him back and he got moving again.

Bodies crunched under us as we ran for the stairs.

I was only too happy to leave the mess and weirdness behind and get outside into the nighttime city and fresh air. I got into the van and unlocked the passenger door for Jerry. He climbed in beside me, locked his door, and put one suitcase between his feet, the other on his lap.

I started the van and took off.

* * *

I didn't know how long we'd been driving or how far we'd gone, but Ronnie and his cockroaches were behind us and right then that was all that mattered.

But after a while, the silence got to me and, because it was all connected somehow, I said, "You wanna tell me what's in those cases that warrants what just happened?"

"Not really," Jerry said.

I rephrased.

"Tell me what's going on or I'm driving you back and you can deal with it on your own."

He was silent for a while, breathing and looking out the window.

Eventually he said, "Money, of course. Isn't that what it's always about? Money or women, and I don't have a woman in here."

I looked over at him, then back to the road.

I'd ended up on the other side of town, somehow, and I wondered if I should go to the police. But did I really think they could take care of Ronnie?

"I'm listening," I said.

He kept his eyes on the suitcase in his lap as he laid it all out for me. Jerry, Ronnie and some guy named Brown had done a job a few weeks back. Brown had been the brains, Jerry and Ronnie the muscle, and the money had been meant for a big man who ran a few illegal operations around town. Brown and company had intercepted the transfer, made off with the money, and should have been long gone by now. Except Brown was fingered and disposed of. Jerry and Ronnie had been pretty confident they hadn't been ID'd, but they also wanted to hold off spending any of the money just yet in case someone put two and two together and came after them.

But, like all things of this nature that involve more than one person, Ronnie got impatient and wanted to split with his half of the cash. Things got bad and he and Jerry got into it pretty bad one night. Jerry knocked him on the head and Ronnie went down. Not knowing what to do next, Jerry left him there. He took Ronnie's half the stash, but he'd left the body.

I was glad our mother hadn't lived to hear any of this.

He said he wasn't afraid of fingerprints in the apartment or anything, he and Ronnie'd been partners a long time, everyone knew they hung out. But no one knew about the money, so hopefully, he reasoned, no one would have reason to suspect him. As simple as that reasoning was, it worked, and Jerry was never arrested. He was questioned, of course, so was everyone in the building, but never was a finger pointed at him.

"But what's with all the bug?" I asked. "How does he do that with them? And more important, why isn't he still dead?"

"I don't know how he's still alive," Jerry said. "He was dead and gone, I know it, everyone did. And I don't know about the bugs. He'd always had roaches real bad, but he didn't seem to mind and they had only just started working their way to the rest of the building."

"I didn't see them anywhere except his place and yours."

"Maybe he was sending them to watch me."

"He can talk to them?"

"I don't know," Jerry said. "That's kind of stupid, isn't it? Talking to bugs? But so is Ronnie coming back from the dead."

I didn't tell him how I'd seen Ronnie emerge from the mass of bugs back in the dark apartment, or how I saw them part to let him walk on the floor.

"Just give him his money," I said. It was the only thing I could think of that might make this all go away. What else were we supposed to do? Kill him again? Have him arrested? Sprinkle him with boric acid powder?

"And what's he gonna do with it? Spend it in hell? No."

"Then what do you suggest? You think he's just gonna let you go, like that?" I asked. "He came back for something, and I bet he's only gonna be satisfied leaving with one of two things, his money or you."

"He's not getting the money," Jerry said. "He can try to take it, but he's not getting it."

"How much is it?"

"Half a million."

I stopped the van. I stared at him.

"You're life isn't worth two hundred and fifty thousand? You could keep your half and still live better than most of the folks in this town. Just give him the money and be done with it."

"No."

I started the van again, but made a U-turn in the middle of the street.

"Where you going?" Jerry asked.

"I'm taking you back," I said. "This is stupid, you'd have more left over than I'll ever see in my life and you won't even do it to save yourself. You know I hate it when you're being an ass. You're dealing with this on your own."

He looked at me, incredulous.

"You can't take me back," he said. "He'll kill me and take the whole stash."

I glanced at him a second, then turned back to the road.

"Isn't that what you did? Grow up, man," I said. "You got yourself into this mess."

"Are you crazy?" I saw him try to get the door open, probably wanting to jump out and save himself, but the street was packed and when I swerved further to the right, he knew he wasn't getting the door open. I ran a stop sign, sped up, and ignored his pleas to let him go.

Okay, so it might not have been the most brotherly move, but I grew up with him, and anyway I wasn't going to let him face his alone. He's still my brother, right?

When I pulled up in front of his building, he was still trying to convince me.

I turned off the engine and got out. He was trying to open the door and take off before I got to him, but I ran around, cut him off, and grabbed his shirt, hauled him from the van and shoved him toward his front door.

I took out the suitcases, held one in my hands and tossed the other one at him.

"Take that to him," I ordered. "When you come back empty-handed, you can have the other one."

He looked up at me from the stoop, like a child begging for another chance before being sent to the corner. But his eyes met mine and he knew I was serious. He wasn't going anywhere except back inside that building.

"What if I take off with this? Up to the roof, then down the fire escape in back?"

"Then I'll take this one inside and give it to Ronnie. Either way," I told him, "he's getting what he came for."

"You can't do this. It's not your money."

"Because I didn't steal it fair and square? It's not yours, either, if you want to get technical."

He stood up, put out his chest and was about to say something, but the front door opened and we both turned toward it. The entryway was covered in roaches.

"Go on," I said.

He looked at me, no longer like the punished child, now like the one who knows his parent is going away and doesn't want to be left in the classroom alone.

I shook my head, telling him I wasn't helping him, that this was his to deal with.

He picked up the suitcase and turned toward the door, but didn't step inside.

The bugs parted for him, clicking along the backs of their brothers as they moved out of Jerry's way.

In the second before he stepped in, I wondered how they'd opened the door. How did they turn the knob?

And then Jerry was walking, very slowly, almost shuffling forward like his legs were heavy steel, but he was moving at least. He climbed the two steps to the doorway, then took a deep breath before crossing the threshold. Another two steps and he was well inside.

The door closed behind him.

* * *

When Jerry was up the stairs and out of sight, I got in the van and grabbed a canister of insecticide. What was I going to do with this, spray Ronnie with it? He wasn't a cockroach himself. He wasn't even alive. But at least his army would be stopped by it. I pumped the handle and carried it with me to the fire escape. I'd told him this was his problem to deal with, but if history had shown him anything, it should have shown him I'd always be there to back him up.

The fire escape was a challenge, but I finally managed to wheel a dumpster beneath it, balance the canister on the edge while I climbed on, then hit the ladder with the sprayer in one hand. Climbing a fire escape with what amounts to three or four gallons of liquid isn't something I'd recommend to anyone, and when my fingers almost slipped off the rung, I thought for sure I was going to end up with my back broken over the side of the dumpster. But I managed to hold on and finally make my way up to the first fire escape landing. From there it was a lot easier.

I had to stop once and wonder where I would find them, in Jerry's apartment or Ronnie's. It made sense they'd be in Ronnie's, though, that being where the deed had taken place.

I found Ronnie's window, crouched outside it and tried to look in.

All I could see was dark, with specks of what I can only call "less dark" breaking through. I didn't understand it at first, then I realized I was seeing the darkness in the room through the cockroaches that covered the pane. They were crawling around each other, making what little light there was dance as it broke through the spaces between their bodies.

I imagined for a second how horrible it would be to have them crawling over my skin and I shuddered, trying to shake off invisible roaches.

I couldn't hear anything outside, but I didn't want to put my ear to the glass. If I heard anything at all then, it would only be the clack of their tiny feet against the glass. Instead, I moved as close as I could without touching the glass, and tried to hear anything I could through their horrible sound.

I put the canister between my feet, held the nozzle close to me with my hand around the trigger, just in case.

I waited, for what I wasn't sure, but I knew something had to happen.

And then it did.

I heard the yelling from inside, even over the clack of the roaches on the window, and the whine of the city sounds all around me. Jerry's voice came through first.

"You're not getting it," I heard him say. "You can't take it with you, isn't that what they always say?"

Didn't I just tell him to give the man his cut of the money? Was he insane or just stupid? I wanted to kick his ass right there for not doing what I said.

"You're not just taking off with my share," Ronnie said. It was the first thing I'd heard him say. "You do what you did to me, and then expect me to let you just take it from me?"

"Life ain't cut and dried. Things happen, man. I can't help the way things went down."

"You're the one who caused it!"

I heard a noise and looked down. A roach was crawling over the bars that made up the floor of the landing, swerving toward my feet. Without thinking, I aimed the nozzle at it and fired a blast of bug spray in its face. It stumbled off the rail, tried to cling to the side, but couldn't, and it vanished into the dark as it fell. The roaches on the window didn't seem to care for what I'd done, or maybe they were reacting to what was gong on inside, I couldn't tell, but they were certainly a lot angrier than they'd been. They swarmed over and around the window pane, clacking like mad and I thought if they'd had voices they'd have been roaring.

I moved to the window again and tried to listen, but the voices were drowned out by the roaches. All I could hear was something being smashed and a voice crying "No, don't!"

I grabbed the canister by the handle and swung it up, shattering the window, and sending the bugs to fall out, covering my hands and arms until I shook them off in a near-panic, their tiny legs a disgusting reminder of why I usually wore the coveralls. I wished I'd left them on.

When the rush of bugs had fallen aside, I looked into the room, but could make out nothing in the dark. Whatever or whoever was in there, I stood there like an idiot, frozen, and giving anyone a clear shot at me. After a second I forced myself into the room, knocking out the jagged glass with the canister and stepping onto the pane, then into the room.

More roaches crunched under my feet.

Without seeing anything in the dark--it seemed none of the meager light from outside had found its way in--I began spraying everything in front of me, dousing anything in my path.

The bugs scurried away from the poison, but I still crushed hundreds of them as I walked through the room.

I looked around, trying to find Jerry. I was beginning to rethink sending him in here.

The room appeared empty, but it had also appeared empty when I looked in earlier and saw Ronnie rise through the bugs like a vampire leaving his coffin at night.

"Jerry!" I called out, but no one answered.

Ronnie's apartment was a one-room, like Jerry's, so when I didn't find anyone in the bathroom, I figured they'd left. Hoped anyway. If Ronnie'd pulled the rising from the bugs routine in reverse, and if he'd taken Jerry with him somehow, I didn't know what I was going to do or how I could follow them.

Getting out of the apartment was a chore, having to keep the spray trained on the knob to keep the bugs off it, and still grab and turn it to open the door. In the hall, I wiped my poison-coated hand on my shirt, and went to Jerry's door. I didn't bother knocking. More bugs were shoved out of the way as I opened it.

And more bugs died under my feet when I stepped in.

The light was out, and when I used the spray nozzle to hit the switch, nothing happened. I left the door open for the hall light.

Jerry was across the room, lying on the floor, covered in swirling brown and black bodies. I couldn't tell if he was alive or not, but I prayed for merely unconscious. I hated to think I'd sent him inside only to kill him. My mother would have killed me.

Ronnie was nowhere.

I went to Jerry and kicked bugs off him, sprayed them, crushed them, anything I could.

The door slammed shut and I whirled. Something was moving toward me, I felt it, but couldn't see. The spray nozzle went out and I hit the trigger, splashing whatever was out there in poison. Roaches skittered and clacked. The thing in front of me advanced, oblivious of the spray, and knocked me in the chest. I flew backward and fell to the floor.

Bugs covered me in seconds.

I managed to stand and wiped frantically at my body to wash the bugs off it, but the second I moved one, another took its place.

I heard a groan, and Jerry was moving. Thank God he was alive.

"Get up," I told him. "Get out of here, hurry!"

I heard him moving, but saw nothing. The bugs had made it to my face.

I felt them trying to crawl into my mouth, and I rubbed my shoulder against them, crushing and smearing their tiny puss-filled bodies against my cheek and chin.

He groaned again. I heard something move on the other side of the room and I stumbled toward it in the dark, blind for the cockroaches.

The canister was still in one hand. I'd been holding it like grim death.

I reached the mass, grabbed it. It was a man, Ronnie, and I held his shoulder, took him to the ground and, through the haze of bugs on my face, I straddled him, opened his dead mouth and shoved the nozzle of the spray can down his throat. I wasn't careful like a doctor, searching for the right tube, I just slide it into his throat like a sword, not caring where it went. I heard him under me, struggling and gasping, gurgling in his throat, trying to scream. But I wasn't letting him get away. Even returned from the dead, this had to work. I found the trigger, squeezed it. With the nozzle filling Ronnie with insect poison, I stood up and held the trigger with one hand while I used the other to pump the handle, making sure the pressure never slackened, that the poison never stopped spraying.

His struggles grew more frenzied for a second, then, after his fight, he stopped moving.

The bugs clacked no longer. The seemed to fall away from my body, my skin, my eyes. I heard them hit the ground, then scurry away.

I'd done it. Whatever hold he'd had on them, it was over now that he was dead. Again.

I wiped away bug smears from my face and took a deep breath, stifled a little by the stench of insecticide filling the room, but it was still a sweet breath nonetheless.

I let go of the handle, looked around. The room was still dark and I couldn't see Jerry anywhere. I wondered if he'd gotten out while I was at work on Ronnie. Then I spotted him. He was standing near the door with the suitcase in his hand.

"I guess the whole thing is yours after all," I said.

"You keep the other half," he said. But it wasn't Jerry. Ronnie opened the door and I saw him full length in the hall light. Naked and dead, but moving and carrying the suitcase with a quarter million dollars in it, hijacked from a big man in town. He closed the door behind him and a second later I heard him enter and close the door of his own apartment. I didn't want to know where he was going from there.

I went to the wall, flipped the light, then remembered it didn't work.

I opened the door again and saw him there from the hall light. Jerry lay dead and straining, his eyes bulging and spit and poison spilling from his mouth.

* * *

I left the apartment, knowing I had a few hours still to get away. There was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in my van and that would help in getting out of the country. I didn't see being able to explain any of this and expect to be believed, so I really didn't see any other option.

I got in my van and drove off. I had to get home, clean up, hide the money, then come back and do something with Jerry's body to make sure he wasn't found for at least a few days. I couldn't skip town just yet; I had a very big funeral to plan first.

END

"Renovation"

Renovation
(originally published in the MONSTERS INK anthology)
by C. Dennis Moore

Jack thought, I need a job.

He didn't think this because he and Amanda needed the money (although it wouldn't hurt). Nor did he think it because for the first time in five years he felt he wasn't contributing (although he did feel that way).

He thought it because here he was at twelve-thirty in the afternoon on a Tuesday, standing outside his son's bedroom door, listening to make sure Max was asleep, and Jack couldn't think of a damn thing he should be doing otherwise. The laundry was done. The dishes were washed. The trash was changed.

And it's only Tuesday, he thought.

The other side of the door was quiet and he decided Max was out for the next few hours.

I need a job, he thought again.

Maybe I need to vacuum. No, Max is asleep.

Well, he had to do something. He wasn't going to stand outside the bedroom door all day.
Halfway down the stairs, he stopped. Listening. He cocked his head, frowned, thought
What the hell is that?

From somewhere in the house, something hummed through the walls. It came in waves, like a metal heartbeat.

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

The dryer? No, the laundry was done. At least, he thought it was. Maybe he'd forgotten a last load. But a check of the dryer proved it to be empty. So what was that hum?

He stood up, listened again, but it was gone now.

Maybe a truck had gone by, something with big bass speakers so deep all you could hear was the thump. Yeah, maybe.

Whatever it was is gone now.

Right, he agreed. No point losing sleep over it. He had other things to do.

(Not really, he thought. But I'm sure I can find something.)

Like a job. After checking his email, he went to the local newspaper's site and checked the want ads.

"Too bad I'm neither a truck driver nor a CNA," he mumbled as he scanned down the list. There were a dozen ads for temporary services around town, but Jack had been on one of those lists for two weeks and so far had been offered nothing.

It wasn't that he didn't enjoy the rest after so many years working all the time. And it wasn't that he really wanted to get out and start a whole new job from scratch, either. But he felt so useless around the house. He cleaned and took care of Max, just like Amanda had done when she wasn't working and Jack was, but this was different.

Why? he wondered. What makes it different?

Because for so many years, Jack was the one who supported his family. To have all that taken away and be put into this situation where Jack contributed squat other than clean dishes and an empty trash can . . . it felt wrong.

He needed to be doing something.

Jack shut off the computer and went to make another pot of coffee.

In the kitchen he heard that noise again.

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

Then something rumbled under his feet, like someone rolling something big and heavy across the basement.

He looked out the window to see if that truck was coming again, but the street was empty.

Of course it is, he thought. The street's empty 'cause everyone's at work. 'Cept me.

So what's that noise? Max?

He started the coffee and went up the stairs, careful of the one that creaked near the top. He stopped outside the bedroom and peered through the keyhole. Max's head lay turned toward him, eyes closed, face the peaceful innocence of a sleeping child.

Okay, it wasn't Max.

Maybe he'd only thought he heard something.

No, because he'd felt the rumbling under him. Something had moved and when it did, it shook through the floor in the kitchen.

And that other sound, the "heartbeat".

You know what? he thought. You're not hearing things. Nothing that's not always there anyway. Today the house is silent and all the stuff that's normally there, you're just hearing finally. It's the central air kicking on or the refrigerator. It's sounds houses make, nothing else.

Yeah, maybe. Probably.

He didn't know, he was only getting used to being home all day.

Maybe if he had a hobby. No, a hobby would only distract him long enough to make him stop feeling guilty about unemployment. Eventually he'd stop feeling useless and worrying about a job and he'd let Amanda support him forever. She could do it on what she made, but they'd be a lot better off with two paychecks.

She's the one who told you to quit, a voice spoke up in his head.

And it was right, she had. But only because he hated driving forty-five minutes to and from, and he hated not knowing if he was going in for a ten-, twelve-, or more-hour shift. All he did when he was home was complain about never seeing his family. So she said it one day. "We'll be fine, really. For a while anyway. Just quit."

So why should he feel guilty now when it was her idea in the first place?

You don't really feel bad because you don't have a job, do you? the other voice asked.

He thought about it and realized, no, it wasn't that. It was because he didn't want a job. That was where the guilt lay, his indifference. If it wasn't for the nagging urge at the base of his skull to get a job and support his family, Jack thought he could stay home all day every day for a very long time.

But not if that fucking noise didn't stop. What the hell was that!?

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

It was stronger, louder, like it was gaining momentum

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

And then, just under that, he heard something else.

HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH.

Jack cocked his head, held his breath, listened.

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH.

It was going to drive him crazy if he didn't at least find out what it was.

He leaned forward, trying to follow the sound, and he caught it a bit louder near the hall by the stairs. He went out there and knelt down, feeling slight vibrations in the floor. It tickled his knees and hands when he touched the wood.

Jack put his ear to the wall and wondered what could make those noises. They sounded familiar, but not very. Like he'd heard variations of them before, but couldn't place them.

He listened, concentrated, thought.

When he realized he felt the wall pressing out toward his face, then pulling back, and pressing out again, he thought he'd lost his mind. He skittered away from the wall, pressed his back against the stairs, and stared at it.

It moved back and forth and he thought, What is that? Breathing??

No. That wasn't possible. Because Max was asleep upstairs and in a sane world where his beautiful son could sleep without fear of monsters, walls didn't breathe.

Something thumped below him again.

Jack got up and ran for the basement stairs. He threw the door open, flipped on the light, and tried to leap down the stairs without falling or cracking his head on the overhang.

The basement walls were concrete block and Jack saw what that thumping had been. Dozens of blocks lie scattered around the floor, some broken in the fall, some shattered against the opposite wall, white chalk dust marking the impact.

"The fuck is this?" Jack said.

Another brick popped out across from him, fell to the floor, broke in two.

He moved back, put his hand on the rail. The walls were moving, like upstairs. Swelling out. Pulling back. Swelling out.

HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH.

One of the swells kept growing, swelling, until the bricks burst out in a spray, flying across the room, pelting Jack with broken pieces of concrete.

He fell backward against the wall and felt that vibration again, tickling.

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

It grew stronger, humming through everything now.

The boards cracked above him and one fell, a spray of old wood falling like beige snow.

Jack looked up and saw what was beneath the ceiling. A dark green membrane with what looked like half a dozen thick vines hanging down from it. The vines were crooked, ragged, and it was only when they moved that Jack saw the crooks were joints, the vines more like fingers.

Something crashed in the kitchen and he welcomed the chance to get out of the basement.

The refrigerator lay on its face. The wall behind it pulsed with life, breathing its HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH. The wall split and one of those vines fell from the crack.

Jack backed away, trying to get through the dining room, out into the hall, without turning his back on the scene in front of him. There was another of those HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH sounds and a stench hit Jack in the face, like a backed-up sink full of sewage.

He winced, covered his mouth and nose, said "Aw, man, that's horrible," and finally managed to turn away. The doorjam burst as he passed through. The walls of the dining room were breathing.

The heartbeat vibrated through the house and the thump of it in his head made Jack think if he wasn't crazy before, he might well be if that noise didn't stop. And it was getting louder.

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

He watched the breathing walls expand again and the sheetrock cracked. The finger vines slipped through, flexing, reaching, knocking off more broken wall pieces. One wall was gone, replaced by that dark green . . . skin? . . . was that what it was?

"I don't think our insurance is gonna cover this," Jack said. Then he thought, I could have laughed at that, if this weren't happening.

And what was happening? The walls were breathing, the house was beating, and were those the house's fingers coming for him? What would happen if (when?) they caught him? Then he thought: Max.

"Shit."

He took off for the hall and fell flat on his face. When he looked back at his feet, he saw one of the vines had him by the ankle. He tugged, but the grip was too tight.

That smell of backed-up sewage filled the hall and Jack would have gagged if he weren't so desperate to get out of the finger and up to his son.

When it was clear he couldn't pull free, he did what he was trying to avoid in the first place--he grabbed the vine. It was cool, dry, like a tree branch made of old, wrinkled leather. He grabbed one of the end joints and pulled, trying to force its grip loose enough to get free. But the harder he pulled, the tighter it clung.

He let go, twisted himself sideways, moved closer to the finger for leverage, then brought up his free leg. He chopped at the finger with his heel and it snapped like the branch it resembled. He was free.

Jack stumbled to his feet and lurched up the stairs on all fours.

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

The stairs shook, the railing fell free and landed on top of the four or five fingers growing from the hall floor.

Below him, he heard an incredible SNAP of wood and he looked over the stairs to see the doorway to the living room was gone. The wood surrounding it was splintered and had been replaced by teeth, a row on each side. They looked as big as plates, but the doorway had no jaw, and couldn't close, so it resembled the gaping, grinning mouth of an idiot.

One of the stairs behind him snapped and Jack shook off the image of the plate-like teeth and took the last half dozen steps in two strides.

Max's bedroom door was cracked. Jack kicked it and it fell away.

Max was awake. And clutched in the grip of three fingers that grew up from the floor. One of them wrapped around his mouth, cutting off the scream Jack saw in Max's eyes. Jack leapt onto that one and it snapped. He pulled it from Max's face and his son screamed, "Daddy!"

"I know," Jack said. He wanted to sound calm, but all he thought he was managing was not sounding terrified, which wasn't the same thing. He kicked at another finger and, with this leverage, was able to snap the last with his hands. "Come on."

He pulled Max to his chest and wished he could have just the next few minutes to hold him, to revel in the fact he was okay. Granted, Max would have nightmares for the next several years--so would Jack, most likely--but physically he was okay.

In the time it took Jack to get Max free, the doorway had broken away and the teeth had come through.

"Close your eyes, Max," Jack said, burying his son's face in his chest. He wrapped his arms tighter around him and readied for the dash out of the room. Looking at the one downstairs, he was sure it couldn't close on him. Now, standing in front of one and having to get through it, he wasn't sure. Given what had happened already today, he didn't want to say it couldn't happen.

Before he ran, he had two thoughts. First, if this was happening inside, what was going on outside, was it doing the same thing? And second, was it happening to any other houses?

Then he ran. Holding Max close enough to him to be another layer of himself, he leapt through the doorway in one long stride, yanking his feet free of the teeth in a blink and cracking his knee on the banister. He didn't look--didn't want to lose that last bit of sanity by seeing the reality--but he was sure he heard those teeth snap closed just as he got through.

Max was crying against him.

"Shh," Jack soothed. "You're alright, Max. Dad wouldn't let anything hurt you."

"I know," Max whined. "But I'm still scared."

You and me both, he wanted to say. Instead, it was, "It's okay. We're getting out of here."

The fingers were growing through cracks in the stairs and some of the planks had broken away, revealing humps of strange muscle that pulsed with the heartbeat.

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

He carried Max to the top and looked down, wondering how he was going to get down without being tangled in the vines, without falling and dropping Max to the house. He stood frozen in his daze for some time, half his mind working out the problem, the other half trying to answer his third question: Why was this happening?

What brought him out of his stupor was a loud hiss, coming from all around, and the hiss sounded like his name. jjjaaaaaaaacckkk. The sound came out of the walls and he thought, It knows me.

If he'd had any doubts about getting down the stairs, they were gone. The door was at the bottom and he needed only to reach that. The fingers curled, opened, curled, inviting him to try.

"Where's Mommy?" Max asked against Jack's chest.

"She's at work," he said.

Right. He had Max. He had to get out for him, if for nothing else.

He clutched him tight again, kept his eyes on the stairs, and stepped down.

A finger snapped under his foot and the house shook. He stepped down again, snapping another finger. The house rumbled.

If I can just keep stepping on them all the way down, I think I can make it.

Another step. Another snap. Another step. Then one grabbed his wrist. He almost stopped to fight it off, but he knew if he stopped, he lost, because the house would use it and take him down, so he kept going, tugging at the finger around his arm, trying to hold onto Max and keep stepping on the vines as he went down. Toward the bottom, he reached his limit. His arm stretched out behind him and the finger was pulled straight, too, save for the joint holding him. The door was maybe six feet away. He could make that in one jump if he could get free. But his leverage was gone. He couldn't do a thing without his other arm.

"I'm gonna have to put you down, Max," he said.

"No," Max whined, trying to hold tighter, to climb higher on Jack, onto his shoulders if he had to, anything to keep away from the floor.

"You'll be okay," Jack assured him. "I'm gonna put you down by the door and you're gonna get out. You go next door, you just get away, okay? And I'll be right behind you."

"No," Max whined again.

"Come on, Max, I can't get out of this unless I've got my arm. I have to put you down. Can you get ready to run as soon as I do it?"

"No."

Jack grabbed Max by the arm, under his shoulder, and hauled him off, reached out as far as he could. Max's feet dangled, kicking in tiny arcs, and Max was whining the whole time, terrified.

He hated himself for doing this to his son, but he didn't have any choice.

"As soon as you touch the floor," he told him, "you get that door open and get out."

And he let go. Max hit the floor and did exactly as told, yanking the door open--thank God Jack hadn't locked it; Max couldn't reach the lock--and shoving the storm door out of the way on his dash out of the house.

Jack turned back to the vine around his arm now with his full attention.

He'd snap it and get out of here.

Before he could, another wrapped around his ankle, pulled him off his feet, and he smashed his face against the stairs that hadn't popped off yet. His nose gushed blood. His vision was gone for a second, whirling to black with stars blooming in the midst of the haze. Slowly--too slowly for Jack--things came into focus only to find he was pinned down, hands and ankles snared.

His head filled with sounds.

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU, humming through the house below.

HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH, coming from the ceiling.

And from the wall next to him, jjjaaaaaaaacckkk.

He jerked, then fell again, held fast by the finger-vines.

Max was outside now, crying. He could hear that even through the other sounds inside and it made him lift his head, trying to focus on his son, hoping to draw strength to get out from that.

This is too insane, he thought. What the hell is going on? This isn't real.

But the crushing pain in his wrists said it was.

The stairs below him cracked and were shoved out of the way, clattering to the floor in piles of broken wood. The smell of backed-up pipes seeped from the muscle, assaulting him, making him want to vomit.

But with the stairs out of the way, he thought he might be able to get out yet. The thought only made him want to vomit again, but it was better than lying here and letting the house . . . do whatever it was going to do with him.

He took a breath, held it, opened his mouth, bit into the stinking muscle in front of his face, ground his teeth on it until something sour and wet filled his mouth. He hoped it was only more blood from his nose.

The house groaned around him, the muscles shook, the vines loosened. Not much. But it was enough.

He pushed himself up, rolled to the side, dangled over the edge of the rise from the stairs, until his weight snapped the fingers holding him up and he fell to the floor.

He cracked his head and everything faded again. But he couldn't spare the seconds this time and he lurched for the door.

Vines grabbed at him, but he was able to kick them away or step on them and he got to the door in a few seconds, panting and still bleeding from the nose. He saw Max through the window in the door, standing in the front yard, staring up at the house and crying.

Then the door was smashed, glass shattering and clinking around his feet, wood splintering and flying past his head. The teeth in the doorframe snapped shut, daring Jack to pass.

jjjaaaaaaaacckkk.

He took half a second--less--to consider his options. They were limited to one: get out.

The teeth snapped shut again, like a huge bear trap set just for him.

Nothing to do but go for it. If he stayed or was caught in the teeth, the outcome was the same, so why not try? And what if he made it? Yeah, what he was fast enough?

The heartbeat came louder and with more beat behind it, pulsing through every inch of the house now. He could almost feel it closing in on him. WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

He took a final look around. The house was mostly dry muscle and flexing finger-vines. A few spots still sported the wood and walls of a house, but amid the living thing underneath, it all looked false and badly-placed.

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH.

jjjaaaaaaaacckkk.

He charged through the gaping hole, his hands out to his sides to catch the teeth if they started to close, and was through before he knew he'd taken off.

The teeth snapped behind him, a fraction of a second too slow, while Jack tumbled and rolled across the porch. He stopped at its edge and snapped his head back to see that he was clear and parts of him weren't severed and hanging in the teeth.

At the reality of his escape, Jack was filled with completeness and finality. From this point on nothing else mattered but that he and Max were free.

Max ran and leapt at him, wrapping his arms and legs around Jack, burying his face in his father's shoulder and wailing now.

Jack hugged him tight, kissed the side of Max's head, and leaned up to stand.

The boards on the porch exploded and the fingers flew out, grabbing for him.

Jack had time enough to toss Max to the grass before snatching one of them from the air, snapping it in half, and leaping out of the way.

It was like the last ditch effort of the monster in the movies and Jack escaped, like the hero always did. Except now he didn't feel like the hero anymore, so much as he was the lucky bastard who got away.

He hauled Max onto his shoulder, took a breath and wished he could calm down. But that damned WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU still reverberated through him.

He moved toward the street, then turned back to his house. The siding was being ripped apart from the inside, broken and pushed away. Windows shattered. The roof shingles peeled away and side down to fall on the ground. The whole mess took almost a minute, the racket was incredible, and the stench of backed-up pipes was worse, emanating from the house now strong enough to gag him from twenty feet away.

Then he noticed what he'd missed since getting outside.

He wasn't alone in the street.

A few errant people, home in the day like himself, stood out there with him, lined up along the block, looking haggard, and staring at their houses.

Jack looked at the other homes lining his street and saw the same thing from every one. The houses were gone, replaced by giant lumps of beating, breathing muscle.

What happens, he wondered. What happens if they begin to move? What happens if they aren't restricted by foundations? What happens if they come after us?

END

"Obsessive Compulsive Dismemberment"

Obsessive Compulsive Dismemberment
(originally published in Scared Naked Magazine)

C. Dennis Moore

Grady was in the bathroom, grabbing everything he'd need, tweezers, plastic bags, his cup. He was reaching for the soap when the phone rang. He stood beside it until it rang a second time, then a third. If whoever was on the other end knew him at all, they'd hang up and call again. If there was a fourth ring, he didn't know them, and he wouldn't answer.

The phone was silent a good ten seconds. Then it rang again. On the third ring, he picked up.

"Hello? . . . I'm getting ready to leave . . . Just out for a while . . . I don't know, later. Yeah, okay. I'll call you then. Love you, too. Bye."

He hung up, picked his bag off the floor beside him, grabbed his keys from the hook by the door, and was gone before his mother could call back.

He locked the door, put the keys in his pocket, patted his pocket to make sure the keys had gone to the bottom and hadn't fallen out as soon as he let go of them, and the walked to the stairs. His mother's call must have distracted him more than he thought because he reached the stairs, ready to step down with the wrong foot. He walked back to the door, took the keys out of his pocket, unlocked, then re-locked the door, stuffed the keys into his pocket--patting the pocket to make sure the keys had gone to the bottom--and walked to the stairs again, this time arriving with the correct foot. He stepped down onto the first step with his left, reached the bottom on his right, and was out the front door three steps later.

He'd gone left last time, so tonight he would go right.

He passed the adult bookstore, glanced in and counted the racks: one, two, three, then the wall. He passed the coffee shop, glanced in, counted the booths: one, two, three, four. Now his rhythm was off and he'd have to walk until he found a business with either two to make up for the extra booth, or five to get to the next set. It was a struggle to keep his eyes off the outside wall of the theater; it had only one movie poster. There was a bar up ahead. It had two windows. And the gas station after that had two pumps. If he was quick, before he passed it and lost the chance--.

He glanced at the movie poster, counted it as one, then went on, looking for the bar and the gas station to keep him on track and get to twelve.

With all this trouble staying on track, Grady could already tell the night was going to be a rough one.

* * *

He'd been making his way through the buildings three at a time, but then he realized that was a predictable pattern for anyone to discover, so he started working backward, counting the one before his last one as one, and going to them by threes from there. It was a difficult pattern to see, he knew, unless he showed it to someone, and that made him even more comfortable with it. It made sense to him, and if, in the process, it kept everyone else off track, all the better.

However, he couldn't always remember which was next, so he sometimes ended up walking four miles out of his way--after all, it wasn't like the buildings were placed right next to each other--and then backtracking, keeping count as he went.

It was almost midnight before he made his way back down the street to the building he was going to. The address was 571. All prime numbers, and all odd. No way to divide that one in half. Nor were any of them multiples of three. It was bad enough they were prime and odd, but at least if he could divide them by three, he would have been more comfortable with things. He had a bad feeling about this one.

He went up the steps, opened the door--thank God for the landlords too cheap to install the security locks--and looked at the mailboxes.

Siddons in 2 would have been a possibility if not for that final "s" throwing everything out of symmetry. There was a Possop in 5, but palindromes had never proved to be easy for him. They felt wrong from the moment he saw the names. All he needed was a good, even-lettered name. Here was Walker. Looks like we have a winner, he thought. And it was his third choice. Even better. Maybe the address wouldn't prove to be such a hindrance after all.

Walker was in 7, on the second floor.

Grady went upstairs, stopped outside Walker's door, and prepared.

He knocked and heard a voice inside say, "Who the hell is knocking at this time of night. There was a pause, movement toward the door that Grady discerned through the floorboards in the apartment creaking, and then the voice asked, "Who the hell is it?"

"Mr. Walker?"

"Who's asking?"

"Sir, I need you to open the door, please."

"Who is it? The police? What do you want?"

"Sir, I need you to open the door, please," Grady repeated.

There was a sigh, then the unlocking of several locks. Grady only counted four, and he kept waiting for more to even it out, but he knew that would be an awful lot of locks because he couldn't top on six, either. It was three or nine at least. Nothing in between. On rare occasions five would do, but with the building numbers so bad already, and Walker being in apartment he'd need three or nine to put him at ease. The four was all he got. He'd just make sure to lock and unlock them enough times from the inside to make up for it.

The door came open a crack and Grady kicked it in, stepped inside, then closed it again with his foot.

Walker . . . wasn't where Grady'd expected him.

There he was . . . three feet below where Grady was looking . . . in a wheelchair.

"What the hell is all this happy horseshit?" Walker asked, looking up at the crazy man.

"Shh," Grady said. He slapped a piece of tape over the man's mouth, then punched him in the face. Walker went out like a light.

Grady turned back to the door, locked and unlocked the doors until a pleasing pattern had been achieved. And then he turned back to Walker.

* * *

For Grady, the joy was in the doing.

He went into Walker's bedroom, stripped the sheet off, and spread it across the living room floor. He took the unconscious man out of the wheelchair and laid him flat. He taped Walker's wrists together. He straddled the crippled man's chest, then leaned over his face. He tapped Walker in the head, whispering, "Wake up, Mr. Walker."

Walker's eyes fluttered and he moaned through the tape. Then he came to, saw the man over him, and tried to scream. The tape kept him muffled.

When Walker was fully awake, Grady stabbed him in the throat.

The planning was just so much consideration and finding the patterns in things, enough to keep him at ease. But when he was killing, he was free. Free of the patterns and the numbers and the symmetry, and he could finally breathe easy.

When he was dissecting, he wasn't concerned with how many fingers he took off, or how many inches long was the length of intestine he wrapped around the victim's neck. He didn't have to abide by any patterns when it came to scooping someone's eyeballs out. If he felt like grabbing the right one first, it didn't matter if he'd taken the right one first last time. When he broke off someone's teeth, they didn't have to be removed in a symmetrical pattern. And when he was standing over the ruined corpse, masturbating into his collection cup, he didn't have to count the strokes to make sure he ended on a multiple of three.

When Grady was killing, it was the only time he was able to just be. So he did it as often as he could manage.

Grady came into his cup, put the lid on, wrapped tape around it so the lid didn't pop off and spill semen all over the place, then put the cup into his bag. He got the tweezers from his bag, next, and crawled around the body, grabbing any hairs he saw, because he never knew if one of them might be his.

When the sheet was clean of everything except the dead Mr. Walker and Mr. remnants, Grady went back into his bag to get his soap.

He moved aside the spare gloves, the roll of tape. The soap wasn't under his spool of fishing line. And he didn't find it behind the ball gag.

Then he remembered his mother calling right before he grabbed the fresh box with the unused bar out of his cabinet.

Shit.

This couldn't be happening. Grady was always so careful, how could he have let something like a bar of soap slip his mind? All he had to do was grab it, then go listen for the fourth ring, whether it came or not. He knew he wasn't going to pick up the phone right then, so why the hell did he stop what he was doing and go wait by it? Now he didn't have his soap, and God knew if this guy would have the stuff he needed.

Could he even use someone else's soap? He wasn't sure. It had never come up before. But now that it had, would his DNA be able to be tracked back to him through a bar of soap?

Granted, he ran that chance every time he used his own soap; with Grady's skin condition, he had to rely on a few specific soaps, stuff the common man in the city wouldn't have. If the police ever realized that, it wouldn't take too very long to track it back to Grady. After all, there couldn't have been more than a few dozen people in the city who'd even heard of his soap.

Surely, the chances of Mr. Walker here knowing about it were slim and none.

But Grady had to wash up. There was no way around that fact. Not only did killing allow him the chance to act regardless of patterns and numbers, it also allowed him to get dirty. He always had to wash up afterward. It was either that, or get caught the second he stepped out of the door.

He got a large square of cheesecloth from his bag, spread it over the shower drain, and then weighed the side down with whatever he could find. The cloth would catch any stray hairs before they went down the drain.

Grady stripped, folded his clothes neatly, laid them on the toilet seat lid, then climbed into the shower.

He sniffed the soap before picking it up. It didn't smell too bad. It was only a half bar, so the original shape was gone, and the original color had been melted and worn down to a light green. Well, that shouldn't be too bad. There were a number of soaps he shouldn't use, but only three he absolutely could not use. And they were all white.

He wasn't crazy about the thought of using someone else's soap. It was too much like using their toothbrush. God knew where Mr. Walker'd had this thing.

He picked it up, scrubbed thoroughly, but as quickly as possible, and set the bar back in its tray. He rinsed and inspected his body. He found no signs of blood spatter. The cheesecloth was pink now.

He turned off the shower, folded the ends of the cloth over each other, slipped it into a plastic bag, and dried off. He would take the towel with him, burn it in the incinerator at his building.
Grady was looking at himself in the mirror to make sure he really had washed off all the blood, when his glance shifted down for just a second, into the trash can beside Mr. Walker's toilet.

"What's this?" he asked.

He leaned over, stared at the box, and had to turn his head upside down to read the label. NEW PINE GREEN SCENT, the box announced. But the name of the soap . . . Grady couldn't believe how utterly wrong his luck had been tonight. Of all the soaps in the world for Mr. Walker to use, it would be one of the three he could not use, now in green.

Grady felt the burning in his skin almost immediately after his realization.

He looked in the mirror and saw his skin turning red, blisters breaking out in a rash all over him. His face was like one huge sack of pus, ready to burst. He rubbed his eyes, trying to make the vision go away, but there must have been soap on his hands still because then his eyes burned, and then he couldn't see anymore because of the blisters forming on his eyeballs.

He thrashed around the bathroom, trying to get past the pain of his entire body revolting over one stupid mistake like the wrong soap.

He bit his lip while fighting back his screams, but that only made him rub the bleeding lip, and from there it was all over in seconds. The poison got into his mouth and formed blisters, it got into his blood and ran to his entire body and formed blisters, from his eyes and mouth both it got to his brain and formed blisters.

Grady was dead three minutes after he collapsed on the bathroom floor. He knew it took that long, because all he could do while he lay there dying was count. He got to one hundred eighty before he blacked out.

END

"Billy Ray's a Good Boy"

Featuring my story "Billy Ray's a Good Boy", the Absent Willow Review's THE BEST OF 2009 anthology was released today. Click the ad for a purchase link. Otherwise you'll be left out, and all the cool kids will laugh at you.

The Laughing Picture

The Laughing Picture

(originally published in AURA: Literary Arts Magazine, Fall 2001, Vol. 27, #2)

C. Dennis Moore

It laughed, and that's all it did, all night, her picture which stood across the room. I lay in bed, the pillow pulled tight over my head, trying to force myself into sleep, but the giggling, the cackling, the roaring laughter kept that blessed state away.

She'd been so smug that day, shrugging off my pledges of devotion, laughing at my need of her as she walked away. And that night, the picture I had, the one she never knew I'd taken, laughed at me. It laughed until the day I killed her.

After that, at night, the picture screamed.

END

"Day Sleeper"

Day Sleeper
(originally published online at The Swamp)

That's what the sign said. So he knew immediately that whoever rested on the other side of that door was a vampire. He stepped more lightly up the stairs.

You couldn't go anywhere without having to alter your behavior for the vampires. First they come out publicly, and somehow gain citizenship and the vote. Then the laws are changed to suit them. No garlic or crosses in public, and peace in the day so they can sleep. And in return, the vampires keep their population in check, and feed only on convicts. Well they sure seemed to be everywhere for a race not allowed to exceed a hundred thousand.

Dale shut his door, then locked it, even though he knew it would do nothing to protect him if the vampire downstairs decided Dale was breakfast.

Why hadn't he noticed the sign when he first looked at the apartment? Maybe he'd become blind to them. Still, he should have seen it. If he had, he would have passed and found someplace else to live.

Dale hated having to rely on the law to protect him when, if the vampires wanted, they could wipe out the law. And why were they tolerated anyway? Ten years earlier a pack of werewolves had been discovered and exterminated. They were dangerous once a month, and they'd been destroyed. The vampires could kill you any night of the week, but they're allowed into the world?
He put away what he could do quietly, then made sure his door was locked and hung a crucifix from the peephole. The sun was almost down and Dale hated being up when the vampires came out. The one downstairs would smell him, he knew. He climbed into bed and stared at the ceiling.
A while later, with the room dark for the drawn blinds, he heard footsteps outside his door. He heard them stop. He held his breath in case the vampire's stench penetrated into his apartment. Dale waited out the silence, knowing the harder his heart pumped, the more the vampire would want him. But if it took him, the monster would be treated like any criminal and dealt with and it would suit the thing right.

After forever, the footsteps retreated.

In the morning, Dale smiled to know he'd made it through another night. After dressing and eating, he wanted to bound down the steps with pleasure to go to work in the day time, outside under the bright, burning sun. But the sign on the door at the bottom of the steps made him slow down.

Saturdays were always good; the bank closed at noon and Dale was home before sundown. Summertime weekdays weren't bad either. In the winter, when the sun was down when the bank closed at five o'clock, Dale hurried home. But Saturdays were always good.

This Saturday was turning out to be the best yet. Business was slow and Dale had spent most of the morning talking to Donna, the black woman he'd been trying to get close to since she started at the bank a few weeks ago. She turned out to be a pleasant enough person, if a little bitter. Like Dale, Donna had chosen a daytime job to avoid the vampires, but, unlike Dale, Donna's feelings toward them weren't fear but contempt.

"It's not that I have a problem," she explained, "with what they are, but it's like every time I think I might be able to get a little ahead in the world, here comes another minority group who feels they're being held back. I've been trying years," she said, trying to keep her voice down in the near-empty building, "to get somewhere. I get out of college after six years, feeling like I had to work three times as hard."

Dale nodded.

"And I finally think my history major is going to get me something good after graduation. You know what happened?"

Dale said no, he didn't.

"I had an interview at a college in Chicago teaching Russian history. Great pay, great position, more prestige than I'll have anywhere else in this world. They gave it to a vampire two days before I arrived, because he was two hundred years old and had been there during the period the class covered. They even rearranged the schedule, made it a night class."

Dale didn't want to laugh, but it was kind of funny, he had to admit. Donna would have thought so too if it hadn't been her that got screwed.

"Probably," she said. "But it could have happened to someone with more options in life. Look at me, I'm a college graduate, making change at a drive-up bank window."

Dale said he was sorry, even though it wasn't his fault. He understood her position.

"You don't," she said.

"No," he agreed. "I don't. But I'm not crazy about them either. I just moved into a new building. My apartments on the third floor and right inside the door, the first apartment in the place, there's a vampire living there. So now I've got watch how I close the door, how I walk up the stairs, how I whistle when I get the mail. All because of some stupid Day Sleeper sign taped to the door. I've got a good mind to take that sign down and let a dozen people stomp right down those stairs all day."

"You should."

Yeah, Dale thought. I should, if I didn't think I'd wake up the next morning dead.

Grocery shopping came after work, and Dale tried to keep his purchases to one bag, no more than two. He wanted to get upstairs in one trip, with as little fuss as possible.

He stood at the window that night, peering through a slit in his blinds, watching a half dozen or so bats flit across the full moon, before he turned to his apartment. He should try to sleep, but he couldn't. He didn't know if he'd ever get a full night's sleep in this apartment, not with that monster just downstairs. Well, he still had two rooms to unpack. And with the sun down, he could make as much noise as necessary. But he wouldn't; no need to alert the vampire that Dale was home and awake.

He placed things on shelves, into cabinets, hung a few pictures on the walls where previous tenants had left nails. He refused to nail anything new: too noisy.

Donna called in Monday. She'd had some bad meat Saturday night and was still sick in bed. Around noon, Dale came face to face with the best customer he'd ever met.

Sitting at his accounts desk, Dale smiled up at a man who'd placed himself in a chair before Dale even noticed he was there.

"Can I help you?"

"You bet," the man smiled. "I need to close my account."

Dale went to his desk drawer for the proper form, asking, "Is there a problem with your account? We didn't misplace a tax return did we?" He chuckled, indicating he was joking and the man guffawed too loudly.

"No, no," the man said. "Just gonna be a little hard to get to it on the island."

"Oh?" Dale said. "Going to Hawaii?"

"No." Dale slid the form to him and the man produced a pen from his shirt pocket. He filled out a few lines, then looked at Dale. "You seem a regular type."

"Sorry?" Dale asked. "Regular type?"

"What I mean is, you seem a regular person. Not like them things." Vampires? Dale wanted to ask, but the very topic was unpleasant enough. "Them creatures, you know?"

Dale nodded. "I see. Right, I'm regular enough I guess."

"I guess you'd have to be to work here in daylight, wouldn't you?" Dale nodded, smiling, wishing this man would finish his form and move on, be loud and conspicuous somewhere else. Then he said the thing that made Dale want to kiss him. "Damned things won't be getting my American blood. No sir. The island's privately owned and the only laws that apply there come from the man."

"And what man is that?" Dale asked, curious.

"Whitaker," the man said as if Dale should have known already. Then the man's face went blank and he looked around. "There aren't any Devil-lovers here are there?"

"I, uh, I wouldn't know," Dale said. "We don't talk too much about them. So, are you finished with that?"

The man looked down and realized he hadn't got past the third line. He went back to writing. After a minute, Dale said, "So, this island. You're going there? And there aren't any vampires allowed, is that right?"

"You got that right," the man said, keeping his voice low now. "Taking everything I own and staying there until the rest of the world comes to its senses and gets rid those things."

"I see," Dale said. The man handed back the form.

Dale spent the better part of that night on his computer, trying to find everything he could on Whitaker and the island. Whitaker showed up within thirty minutes. Michael Whitaker gained his fortune at twenty when his parents were killed. Since the vampires came out, Whitaker had been a strong opposer, but, still young, he'd done little to gain the influence his money would have provided a more established personality.

It took another hour before Dale found the island. He'd been close when he said Hawaii. Whitaker's island sat just over three hundred miles west of Niihau. And finally, behind a dozen misleading links, Dale found an open invitation from Whitaker to anyone human. He had room for two thousand people on his island, low entry fee. The only requirement was distrust and opposition to the vampires.

Dale could do that. But there had to be more than two thousand people in the world who disliked them. He'd better be quick. And keep from blabbing it to everyone else. There was only one person he would tell.

Tuesday morning Donna was back at work.

"Have you seen this?" he asked, sliding her a printed copy of Whitaker's letter. She read it, her face seeming to brighten at the thought.

"Where did you get this?" she asked. "This is exactly what I need."

"You and me both," Dale said. "I'm clearing out my account today. The boat leaves for the island in three weeks."

"Didn't you just move into a new apartment though?"

Dale held up his hand, cashed a paycheck for a customer, then went back to Donna's window. "I've been able to unpack four boxes. I've got one of the 'day sleepers' downstairs so I can't be too noisy in the day, and at night, I'd just rather keep to myself."

"I can understand that. You won't get your deposit back."

"I don't care. I'm sending the fee same day delivery at lunch today. In three weeks, I'm on a boat to Whitaker's vampire-free island."

And the next three weeks went by in a blur for Dale. Four days after telling Donna about the island, Dale received an acceptance of his reservation on the boat. For two weeks, he smiled through work, packed up his stuff, wrote good-bye letters to a few people, and readied himself for his departure.

When that time finally arrived, Dale was moving everything down the stairs to a waiting moving truck. He'd hired movers, but only one showed, so Dale was helping. His couch fell from his hands and slid down the stairs, bumping and knocking the banister, making an incredible racket. He waited motionless, silent on the stairs, expecting the vampire to roar through the door and attack. Then he realized it was three in the afternoon.

I'd like to see that thing come out here, he thought.

"Whoops," the mover said.

"No problem," Dale said and climbed over to pick up his end.

It was slow going and when Dale, carrying an old lamp his mother had given him years ago, realized it was almost dark, he wished he'd sold everything and started fresh on the island because, as it was, he still had another trip or two. But the vampire would be up any minute.

He hurried up the stairs again after tossing the lamp into a stack of boxes in the back of the truck. He waited in his apartment half an hour, sitting on the bare floor in the living room.

Suddenly a knock at the door made him jump and utter a short cry of fright.

Shit. Now he couldn't pretend he wasn't home. But he didn't move. The knock came again, but Dale couldn't force himself to do anything but stare in terror at the door.

"Mr. Crockett?" a voice came through. Dale moved for the door; the voice was smooth, but not too deep, nothing like the vampires in the movies. This was a woman's voice. Whoever it was wasn't a vampire, so the monster must have already gone for the night.

When he opened the door, he saw a short, chubby woman smiling up to greet him.

"Oh," he said. "Sorry. Hi. Can I help you?"

"I'm just stopping by," she said, "on my way out the door. I saw you moving your things and wanted to tell you it was nice having you in the building while you were here. I know we didn't get to meet before but I'm quite used to that. Not many people want to deal too much with us, you know. Afraid they'll be the undead by morning."

Dale tried to chuckle while inside he was losing it. This can't be the creature, he told himself. This woman's too short, too chubby, too old. The vampire downstairs is a tall man, he just knew it. A tall man with red eyes, claws on his hands, and wings on his back. The vampire downstairs, the day sleeper, was not an old lady. Except this one was.

"Right," he forced himself to say. "I'm moving, that's right."

"Well, it was nice having you here anyway," she said. "I hope you enjoy your new home. And thanks so much for the courtesy when coming down the steps."

Then she turned and went down the stairs. Dale closed his door, locked it, moved the rest of his boxes in front of it, and sat in the middle of the room.

Was that supposed to be sarcasm, he wondered, the crack about keeping it quiet? Was she talking about him dropping the couch? Had she been issuing some vague threat? That was an accident. And anyway, she was lucky he hadn't brought his cross off the door and shoved it down her damned devil throat.

He carried it with him as he carried the rest of his things to the truck.

The drive to the coast took almost twelve hours and seven of those had been spent with the windows up, the doors locked, and Dale's crucifix clenched in his fist on the steering wheel.

As the movers marked and loaded his things onto the boat, Dale stared at the ocean liner hired to transport everyone to Whitaker's island. The boat would take off in the afternoon, after every passenger had been exposed to the day and confirmed human.

He was just about to step onto the ramp when a voice called. Donna ran and hugged him, thanking him for telling her about the island.

"Now maybe I can get somewhere in the world," she said, "without those damned things taking over."

On the boat, they sat together, knowing no one else they'd seen so far. They sat by the aft rail watching the ocean disappear behind them into the day.

"How come you never told me you were coming?" Dale asked.

"I just figured the fewer people I told, the more chance I could really start over when I got there. And I wanted to surprise you."

"That you did," he said, smiling, wondering if this was leading where he hoped it was. When they got to the island, once everyone was settled, he would ask her over for dinner.

The trip took a few days and Dale spent most of that time with Donna, watching the water, telling her about his plans of a new, less frightened life on the island. She just planned to succeed, in something, to prove she could do it.

"I don't doubt your abilities," he said.

"Thanks," she replied. "Unfortunately you don't run the world and it's the ones who do I need to prove myself to."

"Maybe everyone there will be more open to everyone else. I mean we do have this one common bond, hatred of the vampires."

"Maybe."

The little time he spent alone on the boat, Dale spent remembering the life he was leaving. His parents were dead, his friends not friends at all, not in the sense he'd miss them. He wondered what kind of job he would hold on the island. With no vampires, he could do anything he wanted any time day or night.

He wondered if he'd left anything important in his apartment. Probably not, he hadn't unpacked everything before deciding to go to the island. But after the vampire came to his door, Dale had been too uneasy to make sure he grabbed everything.

He couldn't say why the visit had shaken him so much, it wasn't like the monster had bared its fangs or showed up at his door with a glass and a spigot. It didn't matter, he told himself, what it had done in those few moments, it was a vampire--that was bad enough. So what if it had resembled his grandmother?

He asked why Donna hated them so much. She reminded him about the job in Chicago.
"I'm resentful of a minority group for being more oppressed than myself. I should be grateful, but where does it end?"

Dale tried to figure out why he hated them so much, but all he could come up with was because they were vampires. He'd seen the movies and no matter what the law was, if a vampire decided to have a snack before the weekly prison feed, who was there to stop it? They couldn't be trusted to obey the laws when they were, in reality, beyond human ideals and rules. They were undead, for God's sake. They could fly and turn to mist and bullets did nothing against them. How could they be expected to follow rules?

Then it didn't matter because there was the island.

The arrival was cause for celebration and everyone did plenty of it. Two thousand people split their time between welcoming parties and checking their things off the boat. Whitaker had prepared temporary quarters for everyone while their things were taken to more permanent homes. Dale hoped he and Donna could stay in the same hotel, but no such luck.

Then he hoped to be able to at least accompany her to her hotel so he'd at least know where she was staying, but once the lists were brought around and Whitaker's people found their people, Donna was whisked away. She kissed his cheek before they escorted her off the boat and Dale watched as she vanished into the crowd.

He asked the man who was taking Dale to his own hotel where Donna's group was staying, but the man just looked at his own list and said, "Must be on the north side, she's not on my list."

"I know she's not," Dale said as he was led to a waiting bus. "I just want to know where she's staying so I can see her later."

"I don't know," his escort said. "We've got a lot of people to take care of. Two hundred and fifty of you are my responsibility. If she's not on my list, I don't know. But once you're settled, you'll get a directory of everyone on the island. Don't worry. Now come on."

His hotel was nice. Nothing stellar, but nice for a privately-owned island in the middle of the ocean. The first thing Dale did was take a shower, then he got on the phone in his room and tried to find out how things worked here.

"For the length of your stay," the person on the other end explained, "everything's taken care of. You did pay the entry fee, correct? That's to cover living expenses until everyone is settled and life can begin fresh for everyone here."

"Sounds great," Dale said. "In that case, can I get something to eat?"

He had fish, though he was expecting to get tired to that soon enough. But after the boat ride, then the hustle and jumble of everyone getting off the boat at once, of signing out their belongings, anything would do for now.

It was night before he saw anyone. A knock on his door startled him and he had to calm himself, remind himself there were no vampires here. The man at the door told him they were holding a reception downstairs for the guests of the hotel, would he like to join?

"Sure," Dale said. "Let me grab my shoes."

For the first time ever, Dale got to meet Michael Whitaker. He was making rounds of the hotels, trying to greet as many people as he could. He said he planned to meet everyone eventually, but tonight there just wasn't time. But Dale did manage to shake his hand and tell him what a great thing this island was.

Whitaker thanked him and left. Dale followed him outside and stopped him again.

"Sorry to bother you," he said. "It's just I came with a woman I knew back home, in fact I told her about the island and, well, she was taken to another hotel and I'd like to find her."

"Certainly," Whitaker said. "After the party, why don't you go inside and give her name to the man at the desk, tell him she's at another hotel and you'd like directions."

"Okay, is he there now?"

Whitaker thought for a second, then said, "I'd hope so. But you should probably wait until later. Every hotel is having its own party after all. You probably won't get her personally until they're over."

"Right," Dale said. "Thanks again."

Whitaker shook his hand again and disappeared down the sidewalk, the full moon shining down, making everything blue and beautiful in the dark. Dale stood with his face to the night time breeze for the first time in years, at last not fearing for his life just because the sun was down. He returned to the party.

Dale met dozens of people that night, all come to build a better life without fear of the monsters. He met the man who'd told him about the island in the first place.

When the man saw him, both smiled and shook hands, happy to be there. They talked for a minute. Dale thanked him for coming in, for choosing Dale's desk that day.

He checked his watch a short time later and saw it was just ten o'clock when one of the hotel staff asked for everyone's attention.

"It seems," he explained, "there's been a slight problem with living arrangements on the island. Mr. Whitaker miscalculated space available and it seems we've got only a fourth of the room originally thought.."

A murmur drifted through the crowd. What would happen to them? They couldn't go back to the vampire-infested world. They were just beginning to enjoy their lives again.

"Not to worry," he said. "Mr. Whitaker has come up with a solution. Not only has he misjudged living space, but he's also come up short on food supply so--"

The doors leading to the ballroom slammed shut and locked.

--"three-fourths of you will be dinner for a while."

A roar came from everywhere at once, and all around the room heads whirled, trying to find out what the noise had been. Dale, sensing everything had just gone to hell, said to himself, "You've got to be kidding me."

The man at the front of the room fell to his knees, then writhed, hunched his back, and his body split down the middle, a large black wolf springing from the broken carcass.

Others filed into the room from some hidden door, each falling to the floor, and each coming up again covered in black fur and fangs. Dale felt his heart fall to his feet when Donna came in, naked, her body already breaking open even before she reached the floor.

Everyone in the room--the humans that is--panicked, mobbing toward the locked doors, piling on and crushing those closest. Those at the back of the crowd screamed as the claws and teeth tore them to pieces.

The screams echoing around him, along with the chaos of the shoving, frightened people was disorienting. The room seemed to waver around Dale as he tried to pick his way unnoticed through the tumult. The food set out for the guests was knocked to the floor and people and werewolves alike slipped in the mushed mess. No sense at all could be made of the scene, not from where Dale stood.

In shock, he searched first for Donna, then for the man from the bank. He found them together. Donna stood over the man's gaping stomach, tearing meat from his corpse.

He tried to tell himself he couldn't be sure that was Donna, but he knew in his gut it was. Just as he'd known, in his heart, the day sleeper in his building wouldn't have hurt him. Just as he knew now he was about to die.

"War is a Mixed Bag"

War is a Mixed Bag
(originally published in Blood Moon Rising)

Eric S. Brown & C. Dennis Moore

Automatic weapons' fire pinged off the hull of the tank as David pushed its heavy engines toward the breaking point. The large metal monster roared across the open field closing in on the enemy bunker in a race against the unknown. If the troops inside had anti-tank rockets, they were fucked. Had the tank's main gun been functional, the bunker would have posed no threat, they could have just sat back from a safe distance and picked it off. But the main gun had been damaged in an engagement the day before, too badly for any field repair to fix.

Marcus, the gunner, sat behind David, blind to the chaos outside and without time to bring the sensors of his station online. Commander Barnes stood in the open turret above, howling, with his thumbs held down on the trigger of the anti-personnel machine gun spitting an unending stream of death into the enemy infantry clustered outside the bunker's walls.

David swung the tank hard to the right as a blur of fire and metal streaked by. A rocket impacted only a few feet behind the tank and the vehicle shook from the explosion as Barnes flopped down inside. Two-thirds of the commander's head was gone, torn away by random shrapnel, and blood was splattered everywhere as Marcus leapt to move Barnes aside and climb into the turret.

Outside, the enemy infantry line had broken. The ground was littered with bodies, some still twitching, wrapped in blood-stained gray uniforms. The few survivors ran away from the field, but where were they going? One direction led to a mine field, the other to the river. The crew inside the bunker was surely re-loading and David knew he wasn't lucky enough to face a second missile. He pushed the tank to the limit again in a dead-on charge. Its main gun struck the concrete walls with the sound of grinding metal and breaking stone before the tank itself plowed its way inside. Marcus screamed, echoed by the enemy screaming too as the tank's massive treads ground them underneath it. As the tank thudded into the bunker's rear wall, David's world went black.

He awoke later. The world was now dark around him. Only the dim glow of warning lights on the control panel kept him from wondering if he was dead. The smells of smoke and death lingered inside the tank's crew compartment. Barnes's crumpled form still lay behind him, and Marcus's legs dangled from the open turret. The sky was dusk and silent, which told David the enemy troops were either dead or gone. He took a look at the controls more closely and realized the tank was shot to hell. There was no hope of moving the vehicle free of the wreckage, even if he could bring himself to drag Marcus's body down so he could try.

He unsnapped the safety belts which held him in place and crawled over Barnes's body toward the gunnery station. Their sensors were his only hope of seeing the outside world and really knowing what kind of mess he was in. He cursed as one of his hands slipped in a pool of something slick and cold, sending him falling on top of Barnes. Shuddering, he pushed himself and hurried even faster to the station. He gave the sensors a hard boot and brought them to life. Four tiny screens lit up and he blinked as his eyes adjusted to their dim light. Two of the sensor screens showed nothing more than the debris covering the front end of the tank, the others showed the bodies of the enemy scattered along the path they had plowed from the distant tree line. Nothing moved in the night.

David let out a sigh of relief and slumped back into the gunner's seat. His hand fumbled inside his shirt pocket and produced a pack of crumpled cigarettes. He pulled one out and instantly threw it aside. The tobacco was wet and sticky with blood. He felt himself in the darkness to reassure himself it was not his own. A movement out of the corner of his eye jerked his head back around to the sensor screens. Someone had come out of the trees. David felt his breath catch in his throat as he stared, then he relaxed. He could tell even through the sensors' distorted colorations that the man wore a NATO uniform. David's hopes soared and he leaned forward to touch the tank's hull, but before he could begin banging on it in hopes of getting the man's attention, the sound of chattering AK-47s ripped through the stillness. The man's form danced as the bullets sent him sprawling. David held his breath and didn't move as two figures wearing the enemy gray came into view.

They approached the downed man cautiously. David imagined he would have done the same, a battlefield was no place to take any kind of chance except a desperate one. Fortunately, the pair paid the remains of the bunker and the disabled tank no heed, their focus on the NATO trooper.

David's mouth dropped open as the trooper leapt to his feet and, pulled his machete from his belt, and sliced through the enemy troops before either could react, all the while screaming in a language David had never heard before, yet had a strange feeling he recognized. One of the other soldiers managed to bring his weapon up and unleashed a point blank burst straight into the NATO trooper's face. The trooper was knocked backward and collapsed to the ground once more. It was only then that David noticed the enemy's eyes. They glowed a sickly yellow in the night. The thing in the gray uniform was not human. Its face was like something out of a nightmare, leathery and coated in scales. It darted to the fallen NATO trooper, yanked a jagged dagger from its belt, and sawed off the man's head. The head came free with a crunch and the snapping of bones. David cringed as the act was accompanied by a piercing shriek and bright lights spilling from the fallen NATO trooper, yellow and glowing like the sun, spilling from the headless neck like honey, pooling beneath the body . . . and then gathering like solid light and vanishing into the air above. David felt his world swirling around him as the blackness overtook him again.

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful."

David heard this through smoke and haze, through a thick layer or unreality as his mind swirled with darkness. He didn't know where it came from, but he recognized it. Someone was quoting John.

"Will you bear fruit, David?"

He came awake then.

While he was out, the world had died. The air was still, thick with anticipation of something big. Even the crickets were quiet.

David sat up, rubbed his head, and flinched when his fingers grazed over the bump.

"Shit," he breathed through clenched teeth.
He took a deep breath, worked his weak legs under his body, and pulled himself up. He was still hunched inside the tank, and his legs warned him to grab something before they gave out. He stood still, breathing deep, until he convinced them to hold out a little longer.

The heat inside the tank worked with nature to give the bodies around him a ripe odor and now that he had his legs under control David's stomach began to revolt.

"No," he told himself. "Not yet. Get outside first."

At the thought of outside, he went to the sensors again and looked, remembering the sight that had sent him into that black void in the first place. His mind told him the sensors would show the grinning faces of gray-uniformed soldiers, just waiting for him to wake up so they could hear him scream as they sent him the way of Barnes and Marcus.

The screens were blank. Sometime between then and now, they must have gone offline for good.

He picked up his headset and tried to radio back to base, but it seemed the tank was out of commission all around, good for nothing more now than . . . storing dead meat, he thought.

He wanted to laugh, but there was no part of him that saw the humor.

Well I can't stay in here, he thought.

The smell and the heat were just too much. The combination made his head swim. He made sure he had his weapon and extra ammo, then grabbed Barnes and Marcus's weapons too.

The turret was still open, offering some small amount of fresh air, and the promise of escape. David drew his weapon and raised himself slowly. He peered over the edge of the metal and saw nothing, but that didn't mean anything.

He reached down to brace himself and get some leverage and when he did his eyes fell on Barnes's head. Well, where his head had been. He saw the mess and knew it was no longer a question. He vomited all over the Commander's remains.

Bent over and retching, his stomach seizing and releasing, David closed his eyes, hoping he would stop vomiting if he just didn't see the bodies.

Finally his stomach settled and he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, took another breath, and scurried out through the top of the turret.

His gun was ready, the safety off, and his eyes were alert.

He climbed onto the top of the tank, stayed low and leapt to the ground, keeping his head down.

Mosquitoes buzzed and flew in front of his face. Sweat ran down his temple, tickling him. His breathing came very loud in his ears.

The sounds from inside the ruined bunker were minimal, nothing that indicated another living person. Outside, the field surrounding them was also bare. Wind blew through the tall grass, but the wind and mosquitoes aside, David had the sense that he was truly and undeniably alone.

The thought didn't make him feel any safer.

Not after what he'd seen.

With that in mind, he picked his way through the rubble and climbed outside, going for the headless corpse that lay just yards away in the grass.

The ground underneath was soft, the grass swished as he waded through it. When he reached the body, what he noticed right off was the blood. What he noticed was that there wasn't any. What he also noticed was that this wasn't even a standard issue uniform. It looked like one, but the insignia were wrong. Close, but no cigar, wasn't that old saying?

It was if someone had known what the uniform should look like, but didn't understand what it meant, and had thrown it together overnight.

He knelt beside the corpse. Something yellow had come out of the neck, he remembered that, even if he couldn't believe it. He tilted his head, leaned forward, and peered into the top of the body.

It wasn't the ragged-meat and bone he'd expected, but what looked like a solid hunk of clay carved into the form of a man. Beneath the body was no better.

Poking up in white tufts, from inside the faux-uniform tunic, was what looked like giant wings.

David reached out to touch it, to pull the fabric aside and get a better look, but as his fingers touched the thing, a shock flashed up his arm. He snatched his hand away, and the body vanished into smoke and ash.

He sat there for a long moment, staring at the pile of dust beside him.

In the distance, the world had gone black. The wind whistled and the crickets chirped once more. David had dropped his weapon sometime and now saw it lying at his knees. He picked it up, then got off the ground, and turned back to the tank and the damaged bunker. He turned, and looked into the face of Marcus, standing only a few yards away.

David's jaw hung open and his gun fell again from his limp fingers.

"I kinda thought you'd react like that," Marcus said.

David closed his mouth and tried to swallow, but his throat was constricted with a scream that wanted to come out.

"Don't scream," Marcus said. "It's a natural reaction, but I have to ask you not to do that."

David blinked, got his throat working, and asked, "What?"

"Long story," Marcus answered. "I couldn't tell you anyway. I'll just say that what you saw over there isn't all that uncommon, not during wartime."

"Not uncommon? Bodies vanish into thin air all the time?"

"Well, he didn't exactly vanish into thin air. There was some smoke. And the ash."

David walked past Marcus, into the tank, and came out a second later with a gray and black box. Without a word, he passed Marcus again and headed toward the tree line. He had no idea where he was going, what he was doing, or what was next, but he did know that if this was the world now, he wanted no part of it. Soldiers that come back to life, corpses with wings that explode when you touch them, and whatever it had been with the black scales that had killed that man in the first place. No thanks.

"Um, what do you have there?" Marcus asked.

David ignored him and when Marcus asked again, David stopped, whirled, and said, "The log for the gunnery sensor controls."

"Why?" Marcus's voice had a hitch in it, like he wasn't too confident David understood what he was doing.

"I know what I saw,” David said. “If the sensors saw it too, I'll leave it up to someone in charge to figure it out, but I'm going home, and I don't mean back to base, I'm going home, and I'm never going to think about this again."

Marcus took a few steps toward David, high-stepping over the knee-deep grass, but David had already turned and was further ahead now.

"You don't want to do that, Dave," Marcus called, still trying to catch up.

David vanished into the trees.

Marcus ran now, plowing through the grass. "You'll never make it back anyway, you know," he called after David. "It's too far and you don't know if there's hostiles out there or what."

No response from David. For all he knew, the man was already out of range.

I could head him off, Marcus thought.

And how would you do that? a voice asked in his head.

His initial response was How do you think?, but he cut that off before it formed; too long among the people and he was starting to react like one of them.

By Your Grace, he thought.

No, came the reply. You must stop him, but don't give him more than he's already seen.

Marcus sighed. "Okay."

He picked up the pace and was soon tearing through the trees, ducking, bobbing, and leaping, racing to catch David.

David meanwhile strode through along, single-minded and determined.

The log was clutched to his chest as it contained the secret of life. And when he thought about it, since he wasn't sure what the hell it contained, it might be that very thing.

The rubble of the bunker behind him, the ruin of the tank, the bodies of those caught in a war that might not even be their own--after all, what were the things he'd seen doing in the middle of this? When he thought about it, he had to ask himself what the war was even about. Did the ones in charge even know? If what he saw was real . . . when he thought about, he realized he was thinking too much.

The heat was horrendous, pressing in and making his steps more sluggish, like trekking through wet cement. The mosquitoes landed, filled themselves on his fluids, and retreated again, satisfied and fat. David's pack bounced against his body, heavy with equipment that jingled like keys in a dozen pockets.

Behind him, faint, but growing louder, was Marcus's calling voice.

There was a crash, a yell, and more calling.

"David," Marcus yelled. "Wait up, you can't do this. You have to hear me out. I can explain."

At that, David considered stopping, but his body was on automatic and it took a conscious effort to stand still.

Marcus caught up, and David immediately wanted to start moving again. Marcus's shirt was torn across the shoulder. Tufts of white poked up through the fabric.

"Please," Marcus said. "Please, just wait and let me explain."

"Ten minutes ago you said you couldn't tell me. Which is it?"

That got silence from Marcus. David had a point. So what was he going to say anyway?

"Well," he started, "I can't exactly tell you. Not everything, not the fine details. But . . . I can explain . . . about what happened back there."

David let out his breath, cleared his throat, and swatted at a mosquito drinking from his arm. "Okay then. What was that?"

Marcus held out his hand.

"Just give me the log first."

"Are you crazy?"

"Guess not, then. Okay." Marcus stood back, kept his distance from David, but his eyes glued to the metal box.

"You tell me," David said, "why I can't take this back."

"What would they say?" Marcus asked.

"What would who say? I don't even know what to say. Tell me, Marcus."

"Imagine it then for a second. Imagine how people would react to know what's in that log. They'd ask questions, they'd investigate, they might even find answers."

"So?"

"So they can't," he said. "They can't look any further into what's on there than you have."

David watched him. Fifteen minutes ago, this man had been dead. Now here he was, trying to dissuade David from understanding something that was probably beyond comprehension anyway, with feathers sticking out of the rips in his shirt. The feathers shifted in the hot wind.

"You mean what would happen if they saw an angel beheaded?"

"Something like that."

"That's not on here. All I saw from the tank was the other thing. What was that? A demon?"

Marcus shrugged.

"In about as literal a sense as you can guess."

"Now tell me why I can't take this back."

Marcus scratched his head.

"What kind of reaction would you expect," he asked, "from a world full of people who discover every war they've ever fought, every battle they've waged, and every man who's ever died in the service of one country or another, has only done so because our war has, from time to time, spilled over?"

Marcus was right. He couldn't imagine a very warm response to that information. He had an uncle who'd died in one of those wars, and his family had never recovered from the loss. When his mother found out David was also going over to fight the bad guys, you'd have thought he told her he was headed off to . . . well, she wasn't very happy. God knew what she would do if she found out her brother had died needlessly.

"Well, at least we're on the side of the angels, right?"

Marcus shook his head.

"Not that easy. Some of us over here, some over there. Same with the other side. It's a mix. The point is to destroy them before they destroy us, regardless of what earthly 'side' we find ourselves on."

"Just doesn't get easy, does it?"

"'fraid not."

David shook his head, turned around, and headed off again. When Marcus didn't call after him, he stopped. A soft CLICK came from under his foot. He swallowed hard. He knew what the noise was. He froze as Marcus walked into view. The angel’s face was full of sadness, yet he seemed almost relieved in a way too.

"Marcus," David whispered, "Help me."

"I can't. It's not allowed. I’m not that kind of angel."

David found the courage to look down at the mine. "You can't just leave me here,” he pleaded.

"I have no choice. The Creator works in ways even I and my kind don’t always understand. I’m sorry." And with that, Marcus was gone, fading away to nothing before David's eyes. Only his voice lingered. "Goodbye, David. Bear fruit for the Father and He’ll watch over you ."

Alone, the field seemed huge and barren, nothing in view for miles, except grass. Even the breeze had abandoned him.

David flung the sensor log into the brush with disgust. He hoped it would survive the blast, prayed it would. Perhaps someone else would come along and get it into the proper hands. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and stepped off the mine. The forest shook with the thunder of the explosion.

Soon the area was crawling with black-scaled things. There was no attempt to hide by wearing the uniforms of the enemy. More than a few of them sat on their haunches, passing around bits of David's charred flesh which they gnawed on hungrily. The general looked down at the still-intact sensor log. In his clawed hand he clutched a standard-issue sidearm used by the NATO forces that he had taken off Barnes's body back at the tank as his squad tracked David and Marcus through the woods. He emptied his clip into the log and then sneered, showing blood-stained yellow teeth to the sun above.

END

This was my first collaboration. Eric was a friend for a few years and we'd swap stories and chitchat and one day I asked him if he wanted to write this story with me. He did, we did, and it was published two or three times (I lost count). The covers below are at least two of those publications, and you should be able to click on them if you wanted to try to buy those issue. And click the link on Eric's name up there at the top to check out his Amazon page where you can find lots of his books.