He looked at the pile of people behind him. Dead kids with guns and pizza in their hands. The roof stairs were on fire. He put away his gun and picked up the last pizza box. Olives, artichoke hearts, and anchovies, less than half-eaten. Why did nobody appreciate anchovies?
“Hey, Sherman, hold up, man! It’s me, Eagle. The pizza guy.” He waved his chipped wrist at the approaching zombie Raider. Like he deserved to live, while these chipless nobodies deserved to get gassed in their own home.
As if the Dungeon Master, looking at him from behind his game console, would see a human being at all.
#24 lifted the gun to Eagle’s head, then froze, looking down. Eagle felt shit pushing at his sphincter. Sweat popped out of his forehead.
“I’m not fighting you,” he told #24. “Nobody here wanted to fight you. They just wanted something to eat.”
#24 scanned the loft, from the neat pile of bodies by the stairs to the harmless, hopeless pizza guy standing in its way. Looking back at the dead bodies for a long moment, it finally turned to Eagle and raised its gun.
“Hey, big guy, you want a slice?” Eagle held out and opened the box.
And he wanted to say, Please, in the head, if you have to. Which was to say, Please, I don’t wanna come back.
Looking past the camera goggles, stared straight into #24’s runny gray eyes. Just pouring his soul out. Being human. The only thing he’d ever been.
#24 gurgled, and a rope of spittle dripped down from its steel-plated jaws.
“Huck… anchowies…” it said.
And Eagle was running even before the barrel dropped, running and laughing with tears in his eyes, thanking God in whatever form it chose for this awful moment of mercy and grace…
…as the Dungeon Master went click click click, stomped his feet. Went click click click again. Repeating it over and over.
Staring furiously at the game that utterly failed to obey him.
Betrayed, with every click.
Fifteen minutes later—as he click click clicked—a text window popped up on his primary screen. MUCH IMPROVED.
Good news. Was good news. It was good to be useful. He got recognition, bonuses and perks all the time. He deserved them. Because he was the best.
And yet, with his free hand, he grabbed at his straggly goatee and tugged until the pain cleared his mind, then reached out and grabbed the joystick again, squeezing and squeezing the trigger.
On the screen, #24 suddenly locked on a worker and shot him in the back, cutting him in half. His crew went on bagging and tagging the bodies, all green tags. Definitely not an equipment failure.
“I shot you,” he said to the screen. “I told you to shoot. I gave you a fucking order…”
The replay of Eagle staring down his favorite Death Machine ran on a corner screen until Sherman kicked it in.
It made his foot hurt like a bastard.
War was just so unfair.
Are You Trying to Tell Me This is Heaven?
By Sarah Langan
Sarah Langan is a three-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award. She is the author of the novels The Keeper and The Missing, and her most recent novel, Audrey’s Door, won the 2009 Stoker for best novel. Her short fiction has appeared in the magazines Cemetery Dance, Phantom, and Chiaroscuro, and in the anthologies Darkness on the Edge and Unspeakable Horror. She is currently working on a post-apocalyptic young adult series called Kids and two adult novels: Empty Houses, which was inspired by The Twilight Zone, and My Father’s Ghost, which was inspired by Hamlet.
Benjamin Franklin said, “Fish and houseguests start to stink after three days.” It can really be a strain, sharing your living space with another person, and so the decision to have a child is one of the biggest gambles a person can take—you’re essentially inviting a complete stranger to come live with you for a few decades and to be a major part of your life until you die. Most of the time it works out pretty well, at least we like to think so, but there are exceptions—children who are desperately unhappy no matter what you try to do for them, who run away, or get mixed up in crime. Parents torment themselves over how they should handle situations like this—Do you draw the line somewhere? Try to enforce strict discipline or maybe ship your child off to a prison-like reform school? Or do you provide unconditional love and support and hope that somehow they find their way in the world? Sometimes nothing you do seems to work.
Our final story tells of a parent who was in just such a predicament, and who is trying to reach his wayward daughter in the wake of a zombie apocalypse. He knows that his daughter is not the child he might have wished for, but he loves her nevertheless and is willing to do anything to protect her. Or at least…almost anything. After all, the world can be a terrifying place, a place full of monsters.
I.