The Collection

But the re­animated corpses did not fall. The pistol ran out of bullets almost immediately, and the redneck jumped off the dais, trying to escape, using the gun like a blackjack and beating on the heads of the men he had killed. They did not die again, however, and the murderer found himself unable toll penetrate the corpses' defensive line.

I heard a scream, the bullwhip sound of a bone cracking, I heard the wet, sickening sound of flesh being ripped.

The dead men were tearing their killer apart.

I left the building. The sight was too much for me; I could not watch. Julio, and two other men I did not know who were standing at the rear of the church, remained watching not flinching.

I caught my breath outside. I could still hear the screams, but the other, more gruesome and personal sounds of death were mercifully inaudible. The warm night air felt fresh and good after the dank closeness inside the church.

The women waited in front of the building with me. We did not speak. There was nothing to say.

Julio and the two other men emerged ten minutes later. Ten minutes after that, the dead men filed silently out. I had no desire to peek inside the church and see what was left of the redneck.

Julio stepped next to me. The songbird seemed happier than he had earlier, less tense, more confident. 'It is done,' he said. 'We can go.'

I looked at him. 'That's it?'

He grinned. 'What more did you want?'

I turned toward the dead men, now reunited with their loved ones. Women were hugging their departed husbands, kissing their late lovers, taking the corpses into their arms. I saw Trinidad, saw Father Lopez. The priest looked at me, nodded. A young woman I did not know grasped his hand, held it tightly.

I turned away.

What would happen now? I wondered. Where would they go? What would they do? The redneck's victims were still alive, even after their murderer's death, so they had not been resurrected merely for revenge. Would they wander off into the desert, eventually die? Or would they live here -no, exist here- in Bumblebee, set up some sort of dead com­munity, pretend nothing had happened, as though they had not kicked the bucket, as though they were still alive?

I was going to ask Julio, see if he could tell me, but I sud­denly realized that I didn't really want to know.

'Let's go,' the songbird said. The other two men were al­ready walking back toward the cars. 'This part is for the women.'

I didn't know what he meant. I didn't ask. I followed Julio down the empty dirt street. I would talk this over later with Baker. We would sit around his shack, down some beers, and I would tell him what went down. We would get drunker, he would explain to me what this all meant, why the women ran this show, what parallels there were with the past; we would talk it all out, and everything wouldn't seem so goddamn scary, so evil and fucking horri­fying as it did right now. Distance would soften this. Time would turn this into history. I hoped. I prayed.

I got into my car, started the ignition, looked out the win­dow. I saw the women take the hands of their husbands, lovers, sons, lead them across the street away from the church. Through a crack between the two adobe buildings between which they were walking, I thought I could see a monstrous pile of dried manzanita and sagebrush.

I started my car, passed Julio without waving, and drove back the way I had come.

I turned on the radio. I could get nothing but a Mexican voices. I floored the gas pedal.

It was a half hour later when I reached the highway. I looked once in my rearview mirror, and in the middle of the 1 vast black expanse behind me, in the approximate spot 1 where Bumblebee was located, I thought I saw the low glow f of a faraway fire.

I turned onto the pavement. I didn't want to think about it. I turned up the radio.

The next glow I saw was the light from Phoenix as I ap­proached the city perpendicular to the dawn.

Lethe Dreams

'Lethe Dreams' was my first major sale. My fiction had been published for years in small press magazines (most notably in David Silva's groundbreaking The Horror Show, which published the early work of so many current writers), but I'd never made it to the big time: The Twilight Zone. I kept trying, though, and fi­nally, in 1987, 'Lethe Dreams' was accepted for Twi­light Zone's digest-sized sister publication Night Cry. It was a turning point in my career.

According to Greek mythology, Lethe is the river of forgetfulness in the underworld. I came up with the title of this piece first and then built the story around it.

'Babies need their sleep,' Cindy said. 'Whoever heard of letting an infant stay up as late as her parents?' But that meant she was awake and crying only two hours after they'd gone to bed themselves, Marc argued. That meant they had to get up and feed her and comfort her and then try to fall back asleep before getting up again for her early morning feeding. 'Why don't we put her to bed the same time we go to bed ourselves?' he asked. 'That way she wouldn't wake up until four or five in the morning. It's a hell of a lot easier to get up at five than one.'

'She is a baby,' Cindy said slowly, shaking her head at?

him as if he were either too dense or too myopic to see her!

point. 'Babies need their sleep.'

'So do adults. Don't you ever get tired of waking up in the middle of the night to feed her? Every night?'

'That's one of the responsibilities of being a parent,' she replied, lips tight. 'Try, for once, to think of someone other than yourself.'

'Look, she sleeps all day anyway. What does it matter whether she sleeps during the night or during the day? What harm can it do to move her schedule up a few hours?'

Cindy turned away from him. 'I don't even want to dis­cuss it anymore.' She walked into the kitchen and he heard her banging around in the cupboards, loudly letting him know that she was preparing the baby's formula.

Marc slunk back into his chair, gently massaging his temples with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. His headache had come back, amplified beyond all reasonable measure. The Tylenols he'd taken less than a half hour ago had already worn off. Either they were getting weaker, his headaches were getting stronger, or he was becoming im­mune to the medicine's effect.

'It's your turn, but I'll take care of her tonight,' Cindy called from the kitchen. 'How's that?' He did not even bother to answer. Jesus, the head ...

He was sure the headaches were connected somehow to the unnatural hours he'd been keeping for the past two months. His body simply wasn't used to having its rest inter­rupted each night. His mind, too, was having a difficult time adjusting. For the past week the baby's cries had broken his dreams off in midstream, leaving his waking mind with the vestigial images of a strangely askew reality. He never remembered these dreams in the morning, but in the half-awake feeding interim they played hell with his sensibilities. Squinting, in the vain hope that it would help relieve his pain, he stood up and walked slowly into the kitchen. He crept past Cindy, stirring the Similac in a pot on the stove, and took the bottle of Tylenol from its place in the round condiment holder in the spice cupboard. He popped off the red childproof cap with the ease of an expert and shoved two of the acidic pills into his mouth, swallowing them without the aid of water.

'You have another headache?' All traces of argument had vanished from Cindy's voice; her tone was gentle and concerned.

He waved her away as though it were nothing, even as the blood pounded agonizingly in his temples. 'I'm all right.'

She stopped stirring the Similac and turned off the stove burner, placing the formula-filled pot on another, colder, section of the stove. She took his arm. 'Come on. Let's go to bed.'

'Let's?'

'You know what I mean.' She led him firmly down the hall to the bedroom. 'You have to make an appointment. This has gone far enough. You've gone through half a bottle of aspirin in one week.'

'Tylenol,' he said.

'Whatever.' She let go of his arm and pointed to the quilt-covered brass bed. 'Lie down.'

He grinned. 'Now you're talking.'