7 posts tagged “short story”

We ran until our lungs ached and our legs burned.  We ran until we stumbled, until we crawled, heaving breaths that provided no air at all.  Then we stood again and shuffled on like the extinction on our heels.

Finally we came to a town, one of those half-forgotten highway outposts in the pine barrens.  We had been thankful for the call at first, grateful her phone had picked up the signal all the way out at our campsite.  By the time we arrived in Low Rock, New Jersey, though, there was nothing left in us but bitterness.

I had chased her and waited for her and consoled her since high school.  Twelve years I spent longing for her like some guy from an eighties teen movie.  When she'd gone to college in the city, I had written or e-mailed or called every day.  If she had gotten sick of it, shown some sign of frustration, I might have given up, but she never did.  

Finally, that night at our campsite, after two bottles of wine and two hours of tears, she had realized.  We had done that sort of thing a dozen times.  More.  

"Why are they always such pricks," she'd asked through the tears.  

"I don't know," I said.  I had long since given up on reminding her I wasn't a prick.

It was then that the teary mist over her eyes cleared.  I had waited so long to see her face soften that way.  She coughed, excused herself to a bush.  Over the next three hours, she went from doubtful to curious to coy.  It was almost dawn, we were watching the sky lighten, when she scooted up against me in the cold.  As the sun appeared, she leaned in, I felt her exhalation my neck, like a warm breath after a million years submerged.  

Her phone rang.  I heard the panic in her mother's voice.  We left the tents, the fire, taking only our packs and my rifle.  The truck was an hour's hike east.  East was most certainly the wrong way,; so we took off on foot.  

We heard the first screams an hour later, off in the distance.  We thought they were victims.  We'd seen the movies; everyone had.  They're supposed to moan.  But in real life, they scream like demons.

The first packs appeared about dusk, shuffling toward us like heroine addicts.  We had thought we knew what to expect, but the movies can't prepare you. That's when we ran.

Coming into Low Rock, everything was silent.  We thought we were safe and made for the hardware store.  Our plan was to get some supplies, find a car to steal, and head up into Canada.  It was a good plan, all things considered.  

But as I took aim at the chintzy lock on the back door, Becky screamed.  I spun around to see a pack of them, no, a horde, shuffling madly down the alley.  I glanced behind, thought we could make the fence. we did make it, but as she pulled me up after her, one of them clawed at me and bit me hard, tearing through my Achilles before I hauled myself over.

I came down hard, the breath rushing out of me, my vision already going red. I unslung the rifle, pushed it into her hands.  She shook her head, crying audibly.  

"Go," I said.  She stood up.  I watched amazed as she undressed, right there, the undead shoving each other into the chain link just a couple of feet off.  She was  down to shirt and white bra in no time, kneeling down to rip off my belt.  She pulled my pants down, and in spite of everything-- the fear, the shock, knowing she was committing suicide, I was ready.

And she knelt over me, grinding while she ripped off the last of her clothes.  She leaned in, kissing me, as my vision went crimson.  I tried to push her off, but she locked her legs around mine.  She was moaning into my mouth.

I felt my back arch, my loins throb, my heart stop.  I had saved myself for her: I didn't know what to expect.  I screamed, first in pleasure, then in unliving rage.  I bit her face, tearing the flesh off her chin.  She pushed herself up, leaned back and swung the gun around into my face.  I clawed her breasts as she pulled the trigger.

My vision shifted again, this time to gray scale.  She watched me twitch once more and die, eyes still open.  I didn't understand.  She leaned in and kissed me again before bringing the gun to her mouth, but it was too late.  Her eyes went red-- somehow I could see that among the shades of gray.  The gun clattered to the asphalt.

She rose and shuffled off into the night.  My awareness went with her, leaving my body behind in the alley, smelling of death and sex.

I followed her like that for a year before a squad of marines finally caught up to her pack in the Adirondacks.  There were a hundred of the dead gathered around her by then, but they only lasted a few minutes.

Now I spend my days running from the pine barrens to Low Rock, my nights hovering over her grave.  No-one knew who she was.  Her I.D. had been in the pack, a hundred miles away.  Her family was gone, her birth certificate and dental records lost or destroyed.  

Besides, no one cares about the dead anymore.  Only I remember her for who she was.  Only I know her name.

Her fingers weave through the diamond gaps of the chain-link fence.  As they pull at her, pulling at her pants and shoes, the steel wire bends, giving out in advance of her desperate strength.  Eventually, she falls.  The men, all gray cloth and gas-masks gather her up, ignoring her kicking and screaming.

"Atlanta ain't what it used ta be," one of them says.  She kicks at him, receiving only an elbow in the ribs for her trouble.

"Easy!" says the other.  "Don't mark her up."

Moments later, she is thrown into the back of the wagon. Doors slam closed, leaving steel bars and benches her only companions.  She sighs, drags herself up onto a bench and straightens her hair.  Her blouse is torn, and no matter how she tugs or tucks, it will not cover her bra.  Looking through the bars, she notes the passing buildings: the Midtown Hotel is close.  It had taken everything she had to make this escape.  She will not be given back to him.  She would die first. 

Steeling herself to this thought, solidifying it into fact, she bashes her head against the bars, hard.  It stings and aches all at once, but she does it again and again.  The wagon pulls over.  She doesn't stop until the doors open.  When the first soldier starts to climb in, she throws herself at him, toppling him back onto his partner.  They struggle against her and each other.  She rips the mask off his face, spitting and clawing at him.  His reply is a sharp blow to the stomach. 

With the breath driven from her, she slumps over.  They get to their feet, straighten themselves out.  She sees his vicious smile vanish under the mask, but she has a smile of her own.  As they come for her to return her to the mobile cell, she levels the pistol at him.

He stops dead, feels his empty holster.  Four ringing, echoing shots later, she has a weapon and a vehicle.

She might finally make it out of Atlanta tonight.  Tomorrow, she will watch it burn.

He leans against the side of her headstone, watching the sun, like a daisy in a sea of rose petals, sink toward the purple hills.

"It's perfect," he says. "I wish you could have seen it."  He rolls his head back, hair crunching against rough stone, and takes three deep breaths, steadying himself.  "I don't imagine you can ever understand, but I hope you'll forgive me in time."

He reaches out to her, strokes her hair, runs his fingertips over the threads that tie her eyes closed, frail and black like her lashes.  When he leans in to kiss her sewn lips, she moans and tries to scramble away.  With hands and feet bound in barbed wire, she fails, falls onto her side and weeps.

Kneeling beside her, he takes her elbows and levers her over.  She falls into the open grave with a thump and muffled scream.  Crying louder, she struggles against the wall of her grave, pushing herself up to stand.

He has crossed to the other side now, and taken up the shovel, loaded it with dense, black soil.  He watches her turn and stumble in the fading light.  When she realizes where she is, her mouth opens, the thread tearing through her perfect lips.  She screams, "No no no no no!" on and on until only ragged, bloody gasps escape her.

"I love you," he says.  She turns toward his voice, opens her mouth again to speak.  He throws the dirt from his shovel.  Covering her face, the earth mixes with blood in her mouth.  The sun vanishes behind the hills, leaving only a sky like a sea of rose petals.

copyright Logan L. Masterson

Stone

Logan L. Masterson

  The rise was slow, but the fall is meteoric.  The heat rising in his suit is reminiscent of stepping up to a campfire, but there's no sense of earth beneath his feet, no comforting woodsmoke cough.  The fear is like a thousand pulses in his brain, eating away at his hearing, his sight, his life.

  But the atmosphere breaks suddenly, and his freefall encounters resistance.  He's buffeted by the ionosphere, by the very knowledge of terminal velocity.  Soon enough, his heartbeat syncs up, his tendons stretch out, his faceplate cools and the earth below is magnificent.

  He's in love with her, an enormous lover rising to take him into arms of continental mass, to comfort him with the song of her seas.

  He tries to blink fast, to drink it all in.  His HUD shows the blinking green recorder, but he can't trust the camera.  He sees with his soul. 

  When the chute finally deploys, he weeps.  It's over.  He came down not in flames, but in fire.  His soul cools, his pulse slows.  He lands and is one with her again.

copyright Logan L. Masterson

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Descending

Logan L. Masterson

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We met on the verge.The elevator doors slid open and I became a camera.  I followed direction: EXTREME CLOSE UP, HIGH ANGLE. 

She was beautiful like a country antique, like a turn-of-the-century brownstone, like me: used.  Her eyes were a well, deep and empty, brown like shadowed stone.  Her face was down-turned, her eyes up.  She was tiny, fragile, her sweater a shroud, her arms wrapped around her like a straight-jacket.

I could not tell if she pled or searched as our eyes locked.  I stepped out, she in; the moment drew out into eternity.  The depth of her eyes haunts me still.

Verge

Logan L. Masterson

The bathwater is hot; hot enough to redden her to lobster tones.  It's almost enough.  She sinks into the tub, letting her head slip under the event horizon of surface tension.  A sigh escapes her barely parted lips in bubbles .  Her eyes flutter open.

As she reemerges, the memory hits her again like the cold air undoing warm water's peace.  The moisture on her face becomes cut with salt.

She looks up at the shower-head, at the wrought iron rack that hangs there, at the razor blades resting on it.  They've just begun to rust, and she wonders if that will make it hurt more.

The hall is grimy, dingy, dank.  Yellowed lights spark off and on in their rusted cages overhead.  Something has leaked from the ceiling, leaving a thousand ochre-stained trails down peeling once-gold diamond and fleur wallpaper.

He hears them breathing through the paneled door, his ear against its rough red surface.  He breathes with them, in time.  His pulse slows.  His eyelids unclench, his brow smooths.  The corners of his lips curl up, but the smile is not anticipatory; just the opposite.

The lights flicker again, a slow, unsteady pulse.  They go out.  With his finger curling gently, almost lovingly around the trigger, his other hand finds the knob.

It turns without resistance.