Something crept beside her on the bed, something large and glowing. A pair of cold, coarse hands touched her forehead. She glanced over at a muddled white oval with a torrent of red running down its bottom half. That was the last thing she saw before the blackness took her.
Abigail Browning lay with her knees drawn up to her chest. She was cold, so cold. She could’ve kicked herself for not starting a fire in the small stove that sat in the corner of her shack. It wasn’t much, but at least it would’ve provided some warmth.
She reached down for her blankets, but they weren’t there. She tried to move her head and was struck by a surge of pain that ran from the side of her face on down her neck. Her hand reached up and touched the sore spot. Her eye and cheek were swollen, and her nose felt like silly putty. With a groan, she opened her eyes.
There was no bed beneath her, only sand. And she was surrounded by sound—voices, quite a few of them, guttural and primitive, squealing. She gulped down the bile in her throat and raised her head.
All around her, creatures with gray skin sat cross-legged, their disfigured, horrendous faces aimed at the sky. They cried at the moon, their throats vibrating as the noises emerged. I’m dreaming, she thought.
Abigail gradually sat up, waited for her dizziness to subside, and then looked around once more. No dream. She glanced to her right and saw a female creature with gray, flapping breasts sitting beside her, eyes to the night sky. It acted like she wasn’t there, and as its sunken jaw moved she saw droplets of blood drip from its chin and cascade down its belly, only to be licked up by the two smaller creatures it held in its lap. Abigail’s eyes widened—really only the left one, since the other was virtually swollen shut—and one of the smaller beasts looked at her. There it was. The monster, her monster, the one she’d seen eating the dead calf, the one she’d saved from the Mullin brothers earlier that day.
The mother ceased her howling and her dotted black pupils turned Abigail’s way. The female opened her arms, and the young one burst from her grasp, its malformed penis dangling. It barreled into Abigail, and for a moment she feared the thing would rip out her throat. It didn’t. Instead it nuzzled its huge, bald cranium into her neck. Hesitantly, she brought up her hand and stroked its head.
The mother, apparently satisfied with the result, wrapped her arms around her remaining child and resumed her primal song.
Abigail sat there in amazement, holding the strange little life form. All around her she noticed it was the same scene, over and over again—female monstrosities with their young ones, weeping at the sky. She looked straight ahead, saw her farm in the distance, nothing but a speck, and gazed at the thing in her arms.
The child cooed, and then placed his crooked palm on her chest. That hand rose up and bony fingers wrapped around her jaw, moving it up and down.
In that moment Abigail understood the purpose behind the strange chorus. She mimicked the rest of the clan, gazing at the ugly yet precious thing in her arms while she sang.
The mutated child’s eyes began to close, and a smile stretched across Abigail’s face. After years of searching, she’d finally found a place to belong. She was home.
Chorus, a story inspired by the illustration by Jesse David Young that accompanies it in this collection, originally appeared in Dark Tomorrows: Second Edition, a collection of short stories by J.L. Bryan.
THE ONE THAT MATTERS
Bonus Story by Robert J. Duperre
Ash covered the landscape like cold, dead snow. Small lumps scattered throughout the yard, buried in the piles of blowing dust. They might have been objects forgotten during the rush to beat the easterly wind, the old feed buckets, or perhaps the remains of the chickens those buckets used to nourish. A cold wind blew, revealing a blackened joint. It might have been the elbow or knee of some poor soul who’d come in search of help; help they obviously no longer needed.
Guido grunted and turned away. Nothing he hadn’t seen before. He continued around the old farmhouse, back creaking, lungs wheezing. Placing a hand on the back porch’s stoop, he rested a moment. His eyes looked skyward. Dark clouds still loomed ominous overhead. They billowed deep and low, yet seemed to stretch for miles into the atmosphere. Water fell on the shield of his gas mask. He whisked the drops away with a wipe of his gloved hand, leaving trails of black soot. Another gust of wind caught him unawares, and he shivered at its biting cold.
Turning back to the task at hand, Guido circled his house until he found what he was looking for—a thick, curved metal construction that jutted from the foundation. He dipped beneath its lip, knelt in the mounds of wet, gray powder, and took a large brush from his belt. Originally used to clean the horses’ hides, it had gained a new purpose, much like everything else since the eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera. He swept the bristles from side to side against the grate beneath the steel casing, clearing ash from the gaps in the filter. It was tough work, and his back ached with each stroke, but Guido Malfi was nothing if not a diligent man. Before long, he’d cleared the filter as best he was able. In another three days he’d have to come out again, but that was still three days he could spend inside, warmed under the cover of many blankets. Three days that he could spend with Her.
Guido slid the lock through its catch after he closed the bunker’s overhead door. The sound of metal scratching against metal echoed through the small entryway, like fingernails over a chalkboard. He winced, waiting for the reverberations to cease. When they did, he moved to the second door and slid it open.
She was waiting for him. She sat on the couch, still wearing the Bratz pajamas she’d had on when she first arrived. Her brown hair was clumped and ratty, but to him, in the dim yellow light, it looked silky and beautiful. Her eyes lifted. She recoiled for a split second and then smiled. Her teeth were crooked, in bad need of braces she would never get.
He slid the gas mask from his head and took a deep breath. His lungs rattled, but that was okay. He’d lived with worse than that before.
The room was small, barely ten feet by ten, entombed by concrete walls four feet deep. This was Guido’s pride and joy—a bomb shelter he’d constructed over the last twenty years, a bomb shelter folks assured him he’d never need. He chuckled. So much for them.
He’d stocked the cubby beneath the shelter with enough canned goods and water to last two years, though the girl had thrown off his initial estimations. Grabbing a flashlight, he lifted the hatch and looked inside. The gas generator that powered the lights and the air filter chugged along below the earth, its exhaust piped out to the surrounding woods. He smiled upon hearing its guttural purr. Snatching a couple cans of peaches from a shelf, he shut the hatchway and turned.
“Do you want some food, Alyssa?” he asked.
The little girl nodded.
“Yes please, Mr. Malfi,” she replied.