brain tissue from aborted fetuses for genetic research. Terrorists had thrown seven satchel charges into an Israeli maternity ward…
“It’s beautiful,” Smith muttered.
But then its reality rose before the vision. Flashing red and blue lights of terror. Sirens. Gunshots. Distant screams. A cool breeze carried in the chaotic stench.
Smith blinked.
The ghost shifted. Now he understood.
It didn’t mean his life — of course not. It meant the
The night lolled. The ghost shifted like black sand pouring, until it was perfect, beautiful flesh. Dark long straight hair and dark eyes. Dark yet lambent nakedness. Poreless indefectible skin, smooth as newly spun silk. And it wasn’t a woman at all, but a girl, a prepubescent little girl. Nor was it a ghost…
The goddess’ voice eddied like water running through the bowels of a sewer, or garbage blown in gutters.
Smith felt on fire inside. He watched his hand reach out, but it wasn’t the veined, liver-spotted hand he had known. It was a new hand, forged in truth, in acknowledgment. Smith wept, oblivious to the new hot blood, the fresh skin, strong muscles, and steady heart. He embraced the goddess.
He began to slide down, as if on a greased pole, sloughing off her perfect skin, and revealing her true age. Her horror sang to him, and embraced him back, the flensed figure gleaming in hate, disease, insanity. In despair and in pus.
In cruelty and heartbreak.
In truth.
Smith knelt in worship, and kissed the little feet, which were now caked by the blood, offal, and excrement of eons.
Interchange, mutability, transposition, transfigurations. With this story, I transposed a certain aspect of myself into the meld of my fears. All writers, in one sense or other, try to predict the future, often their own. The protagonist is me, in some abstract realm. My fear…and perhaps any writer’s fear. If fiction can be a real thing, this is as real as I can get. I like this story very much, and I dedicate it to my father who died on Christmas night, 1986.
The Seeker
(For Mary)
Bock’s eyes flicked up. “Something buzzing the hopper, Sarge.”
Then: “Victor Echo Two Six, this is X-ray One. Acknowledge.”
Bock stalled over the radio and AN/FRA shift-converter. “Who the fuck’s X-ray One, Sarge? Division?”
Ruben checked the codebook. “It’s Air Force Recovery Alert Operations. Gonna get shit on by fly boys again. Answer it.”
“X-ray One, this is Victor Echo Two Six. Go ahead.”
“Proceed to incoming grid. Target perimeter positive.”
Bock held the mike away from himself like a chunk of rancid meat.
Ruben could not believe what he’d just heard. The pause hovered in static, then Ruben grabbed the mike. “X-ray One, this is Victor Echo Two Six Tango Charlie. Repeat your last transmission.”
“Proceed to incoming grid,” the radio answered back. “Target perimeter positive.”
His memory struggled with the reality of fright. The sequence seemed miles away. “Status white. Progress code?”
“Red.”
“Recall code?”
“None.”
“Directive order?”
“Directive order is standby at target perimeter. This is NOT a drill. This is NOT an exercise. Assume SECMAT alert state orange.”
“Orders logged,” Ruben droned.
“Victor Echo Two Six, this is X-ray One. Out.”
Ruben hung up the AN’s mike. Bock was sweating. Jones, the track’s driver, craned back from the t-bar. “What gives, Sarge!”
“Calm down,” Ruben eased. But he could not calm the thought:
“We’re at war,” Bock muttered.
The alert had sounded at 0412; they’d been in the field nearly a day now. Victor Echo Two Six was a modified M2 armored personnel carrier, fully CBN equipped, and its crew was what the U.S. Army Chemical Corps termed a hazmat field detection team. Their primary general search perimeter was familiar open scrubby land; they’d tracked this terrain dozens of times on past alerts. Ruben, the TC, hadn’t been worried until now — until he’d heard the magic words:
“What are you guys, a bunch of dickheads?” he countered. “This is a CONUS alert. If we were at war, the whole state would be a clusterfuck by now, and the op stat would’ve been jerked up a lot higher than a CONUS. We’d be at Defcon Two at least. Think with your brains instead of your asses. If this was war, why would they recall every unit in the division except us?”
“This is shit, Sarge!” Jones was not appeased. “Something’s really fucked up!”
“Calm down. We’re not at war.”
Bock was shaking, muttering, “It fucking figures. I’m two weeks short, and this shit happens.”
“You guys are shitting your pickles for nothing. We had four of these last year, remember? One of the early warning sites probably picked up something in our telemetry line. It’s probably another meteor, or a piece of space junk. Relax, will you?”
“Here it comes,” Bock announced.
The XN/PCD 21 began to click. The hopper freqs shifted through their 5-digit discriminators. Then the mobile printer spat out their destination grid.
Bock slid out the map book, teeth chattering. Jones’ face was turning to paste. They were just boys, and they were shit-scared, but Ruben had to wonder if he was too.
He put his hands on their shoulders. “We gotta get our shit together, girls. We’re hardcore Army decon ass- kickers, and we don’t piss in our BDU’s every time an alert directive goes up. We ain’t afraid of nothin’. We eat napalm for breakfast and piss diesel fuel, and when we die and go to hell, we’re gonna shove the devil’s head up his ass and take the fuck over. Right now we gotta job to do, and I gotta know if you guys are with me.”
Bock wiped sweat off his brow with his sleeve. “Hardcore, Sarge. I’m no pussy. My shit’s tight, and I’m with you.”
