 
Have a Bad Day: Seven Stories of Sickness, Sin, and Psychopaths

### Ross Willard

Copyright 2013 Ross Willard

Smashwords Edition

Discover other titles by Ross Willard at Smashwords.com

System Purge: Book 1 of Digital Evolution

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people, not even if that other person is your evil twin, or your slightly unethical doppelganger, or your rather mischievous clone. If you find yourself tempted to share this with another reader, please take a deep breath and remind yourself of that one time, back in grade school, when you shared one of your precious cookies with that cute girl you had a crush on, only to find out that she went and gave your cookie to some boy that she had a crush on, and just how bad that made you feel. Then remember that the author, who has worked a series of menial, low-paying jobs over the years in order to focus his attention on his writing, just shared his oh-so-special book with you. But, no, he doesn't have a crush on you. I mean, he probably doesn't. Unless you're that girl who smiled at him at the coffeehouse that one time. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, well, shame on you. You get online, and you purchase your own copy, right now. I said NOW, mister! And don't think I didn't see you roll those eyes!

### Table of Contents

### If Only in My Dreams

### Vespine

### Shallow Graces

### A Terrible Itch

### Desperate Times

### A Gambling Man

### Last Day on Earth

### About the Author

### If Only In My Dreams

There's something I'd like to talk with you about. I know my problems probably aren't your biggest concern right now, but I have to talk to somebody. Seeing as how you're something of a captive audience, I thought I'd take advantage.

I've got this recurring dream. I've had it for years. The dream always starts out the same. I'm walking down a street, and as I'm walking, I'm struck by what a nice neighborhood I'm in. The road is smooth and even, no potholes, no speed bumps. The lawns are manicured, without a weed in sight, and there are children running and laughing all around me. Usually they're playing tag, or hide and go seek. The world is sunny, and bright. I feel good. I feel . . . clean.

Then I realize someone is watching me.

Sometimes he's with the other children. Sometimes he's standing in a window, staring.

It's Billy.

And I know where Billy is.

Billy is in heaven.

That means I must be in heaven too.

I look around again, and nothing's changed, but somehow everything is different, and I wonder how I could have missed it, how I could have taken so long to realize where I am.

I keep turning, and looking, staring, wondering . . . turning around and around until I find myself facing him. Facing Billy. He's standing right in front of me now, and he's smiling.

The smile is . . . pure. Pure in a way I've never seen before. Not from my mother, not from any lover I've ever had. Not like anything I ever thought could be real. It's a smile without hesitation, without doubt. Like he's truly happy to see me.

I stare at him, trying to figure out what to say. It's funny because he seems so much smaller than I remember. He was taller than me the last time we were together, but now . . . he's still a fourteen-year-old boy, and I'm all grown up.

Finally I open my mouth, and I tell him that I'm sorry. And I am. I tell him that I wish I hadn't killed him. And I do.

He laughs. He laughs, and he tells me that none of that matters anymore. That it isn't important. Not here.

But I can't believe that. I press him, arguing, convinced that there must be some kind of mistake. I know what I am. I know where I belong, and it isn't heaven.

Billy keeps smiling and tells me that there was no mistake. That I am where I'm meant to be.

He's wrong, I say. My very presence taints this place.

Billy shakes his head. Everything is as it should be, as it was meant to be. He tells me that I should come with him to meet God. That God will explain everything.

He takes my hand, and we begin to walk.

It's a long walk, but the sky is bright, and there is a cool wind, and the people we pass all smile and wave.

They become a blur as we pass, too many faces to count, much less remember. Until I see someone I recognize. That face changes from dream to dream. Sometimes it's the whore from El Paso. Sometimes it's the trucker from Tennessee. I stare, expecting hatred, expecting rage from them, righteous fury at my presence. But all I see are smiles, and as we pass they fall in behind us, laughing and talking as we go to see God.

It doesn't take long before I see another familiar face. Another of my victims. Then another. And another. They all join us, walking behind us. Sometimes they skip. Sometimes they sing and hold hands. Their actions change, but their joy does not, as we go to meet God. Me and the people I've killed.

There are so many people. So many faces. Faces that, when I'm awake, I can only remember twisted in agony or slackened in death. Here they're smiling. Clean. Happier and healthier than they ever were in life.

Then we reach the end of the road. We reach God. I stare at Him, gaping, in awe, struggling to find my voice. Finally I do.

I fall to my knees before Him, confessing that there's been some mistake. I tell Him that I'm not meant to be here. That I'm an animal.

God smiles at me. The most radiant smile I've ever seen. He speaks. I'm exactly where I was meant to be, He says.

I tell Him that I don't understand. That I'm a monster.

He shakes His head and says, "Didn't anyone ever tell you, my son? I made you in my image. I made you just like me."

That's when I see what's in His hand.

I try to turn. Try to run, but before I can move I feel their hands, the hands of everyone I ever killed catching me. Holding me still as God approaches.

The first time, that was the end of the dream. Lately, though, it's begun to stretch out. Sometimes I can feel that thing pressed against my flesh. Sometimes . . . sometimes I can smell God's breath, thick and heavy around me. Sometimes I can hear them laughing.

That's when I wake up, screaming.

I can see I've disturbed you. I apologize. If anything, I'd hoped it would be a comfort. The next few hours will not be pleasant for you, and I wanted you to know that you will get some small measure of revenge.

If only in my dreams.

***

Return to Table of Contents

### Vespine

Michelle was humming a tuneless song as she exited her apartment.

I stopped breathing for a moment as I watched her through the peephole in my apartment. She was stunning. Her hair, cut at shoulder length, was the color of daffodils. Her skin was tanned, but the thin pale lines on her shoulders spoke of a natural tan, not the kind bought at a salon. Her clothes were not immodest, but they didn't hide her perfect body. The only jewelry she wore were metallic earrings, dark blue, verging on black, and a similarly colored bracelet.

The most intoxicating thing about her, however, was the way she moved. She had a kind of elegance, a kind of perfection, that few people can aspire to. She seemed to float down the hallway.

I held myself back from opening the door and following her to the stairs. As desperately as I wanted to talk to her, to touch her, I couldn't. Not yet. I'd been overeager before. I'd moved too fast, I'd scared them away. It had taken time for me to learn patience. Time and a few bad experiences.

I waited until her footsteps faded away, then closed my eyes and counted to fifty before I opened the door. It had taken me a while to map out her weekly routine. Months, actually. Not because she was particularly elusive -- if anything, she was easier to follow than most women -- but there was a limit to how long you could watch someone before they noticed you.

There was a distinct limit to how many days in a row you could watch someone without them noticing. If you wanted to stretch that out, you had to get creative. You had to change your clothes, your hair, your style. I got some funny looks at work, coming in every couple of days with a whole new look, but I wasn't trying to impress them. Who cares what a bunch of minimum wage losers think?

At the bottom of the stairs I peeked out the front window. Michelle was waiting at the bus stop. She was always early for her bus, which was always late.

I slipped out the front door and headed down the street. I ducked my head and trudged slowly up the street, slouching, with both hands in my pockets.

At the first intersection, I turned right and picked up my pace. One of the best ways to keep someone from realizing you were following them was to be wherever they were going before they got there. Getting there was the only problem. Traveling five miles on foot wasn't fast enough, and taking a taxi got expensive. I'd gotten lucky, though. I'd found a bike someone hadn't bothered to lock up, and I found a place to stash it. I could cover the distance from the apartment to her work with time to spare.

A little bit of effort, and a few shortcuts, and I found myself on a park bench facing Michelle's flower shop about five minutes before she arrived.

Technically, the shop belonged to an old Brazilian man, but to me it was Michelle's shop. She moved between the flowers, beautiful, captivating, perfect. She smiled at all of her customers, flirting with the regulars, making arrangements, taking calls. I watched her every motion.

The trick to watching for that long without drawing attention is having a good secondary activity. I've tried a few things. Newspapers and books work pretty well, but I prefer feeding the birds. For one thing, not many people read with sunglasses on, and without sunglasses, people can tell when you're looking at them. For another, trying to look like you're reading involves turning pages at regular intervals, which means paying less attention to the person you're watching than I like.

But while feeding the birds is good cover, it isn't perfect. You have to watch your time. If you stay in the same place for more than a couple of hours, you run the risk of being noticed. I waited until about ten thirty, when Michelle took advantage of the lull in sales to begin her daily culling of old flowers. It was the time of day when she was most likely to look out the window and notice me, so I headed down the street to a small clothing resale shop, which bought clothes for pennies, and sold them for dimes. The quality wasn't very high, but all I needed was to change enough of my appearance that nobody would connect me to the man who'd spent his morning feeding birds in the park.

I bought a crummy jacket and a ball cap. Then I headed to a sandwich shop just around the corner. Most of their sandwiches were overpriced, but the owner had a lunch special that fit my budget.

After that it was back to the park. This time I took a spot near the playground. I avoided the benches immediately surrounding the playground. Mothers and nannies claimed those and were wary of anyone who seemed out of place. A picnic table nearby sufficed, as it left me far enough away that the women with children felt comfortable ignoring me but was close enough that I wouldn't stand out of the crowd if Michelle happened to look my way.

Being a bit farther away, and in a deeper shadow, thanks to the brighter sunlight, I was comfortable taking my sunglasses off and pretending to read a small novel I'd brought with me.

Michelle was talking to a customer. A young man. He was attractive. Not as attractive as Michelle, but who was? Still, he was attractive enough that I had to admit it. And he was flirting with her. I could tell even from that distance. And she was flirting back. Usually she only flirted with her regulars, old men, long married and not the kind to cheat, though they might buy a larger than average bouquet for her sweeter than average smile.

This young man, he wasn't buying anything. Nothing in his hands and not looking. No, he was there to flirt. He was there for Michelle.

And she wasn't resisting.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I had to stay calm. I had to keep my head on straight. It wasn't as though they were writhing, naked on the floor. They weren't even touching. They were just talking. And smiling. She flicked her hair and gave him a coy look. He puffed out his chest like a bullfrog and said something that made her laugh.

She pulled out a piece of paper, jotted on it, and handed it to him.

I was stunned. She was encouraging him.

He was a nobody, some random suitor, and she was encouraging him.

The man winked at her, jocular, flirtatious, and headed out of the store, the slip of paper in hand. Outside he paused, pulling a phone from his pocket and dialing as he stared at the paper in his hand.

Inside the store she paused from her work and pulled out her phone.

Her phone number. She'd given him her phone number. I'd known it but hadn't wanted to believe it. The whore!

No. No, this wasn't her fault; it was his. He should have known better. Just walking in like that and staking a claim! He was presumptuous! He should have done his research. He should have made sure she didn't already belong to someone. He should have made sure she didn't belong to me.

They talked for almost a minute, smiling, glancing at each other through the window. Finally, he hung up, and, with a wave, walked away.

Inside, I saw her smile and bite her lower lip.

I heard the sound of ripping, and looking down, realized that I'd torn my book in half. My hands were quivering in rage. My teeth were clenched tight.

I stood and began to walk, my mind buzzing with fury. I didn't even realize what I was doing until a block later, when I found myself a few short steps behind the man, my hands twitching, my teeth grinding.

It took an effort for me to slow my pace, to let him put a little distance between us. As angry as I was, as hot as my blood boiled in my veins, I couldn't do anything. Not yet. Not in public.

So I fell back, forcing my clenched fists into my pockets and relaxing my jaw.

I followed him for several blocks, around a corner. He turned into an alley, nodding at a group of young men wearing black pants and grey shirts. I knew the restaurant. Michelle had come here a few times. The man, no, not a man, the boy, he'd waited on her, I remembered that now.

A waiter, a pathetic waiter, presuming he had a chance with the likes of her?

I walked past them, then stopped, pressing against a wall to listen.

"Well?" One of the men asked. "You chickened out again, didn't you?"

"Nope, walked right in and asked her out."

"Bull."

"I did."

"And?"

There was a pause, a dramatic pause. "And we have a date."

My body quivered with fury, the world became tinted with red, and it took every fiber of my being to prevent myself from running into the alley and throttling the boy to death.

"No way! When?"

"Tonight."

"Tonight? A girl that hot, and she wants to go out with you tonight? You lucky dog."

"It gets better." The boy's smugness was salt in the crevice that had been cut into my chest. "We're having dinner at her place."

A chorus of surprise and congratulations erupted from the group.

It was more than I could stand. I pushed off the wall and forced myself to walk away. My emotions were too powerful, too overwhelming. I needed to think. I needed to be calm, to be rational.

I walked and kept on walking, trying to breath, trying to think.

It was miles later that I managed to stuff the last of my emotions down. The boy was a problem, that was true, but that's all he was. A problem, an obstacle to be overcome. All I needed to do was make sure that she realized it. And make sure that nothing happened before she realized it.

That wouldn't be too hard. We were neighbors, after all.

I just needed to set some things up before their date got started.

I took a deep, calming breath as I got my bearings and headed home, planning all the way.

***

Michelle was in the lobby of the apartment when I came in.

"Hey neighbor." She smiled at me, then frowned. "You are my neighbor, right? 410?"

"Uh. Yes."

"Oh, good." She smiled again. "You changed your hair since the last time we talked."

I'd changed it about a dozen times since then. "Yeah." I ran my hand through my hair. "Yeah, I did."

"Hey, can I get you to do me a favor?"

I blinked. "Um, sure."

"I've been wanting to move some furniture around in my apartment for a while now, but, you know." She shrugged in embarrassment. "A little girl like me, and some of that stuff is pretty heavy."

She was inviting me into her apartment. I'd never seen the inside of her apartment. I had learned the hard way that you had to be careful about that kind of thing.

"Sure. I can do that." I offered a nervous smile.

"Awesome." She jumped up and gave me a kiss on the cheek. "You're a doll. Come on."

"Oh, now?"

"Yeah. Is that a problem?" She had her hand wrapped around mine, pulling.

"No. No, of course not." I let her pull me up the stairs.

Her furniture was bright, light blue and red, pink and yellow, like a field of flowers. I didn't have long to look; before I'd even set foot in the room, she was pointing and giving instructions.

I spent almost an hour moving things around, pausing only when she wanted to vacuum where furniture had been or look things over and decide where she wanted them to go. Her apartment, like mine, consisted of a main living room with a small kitchen alcove and a hallway that led to a bathroom and bedroom. How she had managed to fit so much furniture in so little space I couldn't begin to guess, but then I didn't much care. I was in her apartment. I was talking to her, like we were old friends. I hadn't expected to get this far for another month. Maybe more. True, she had a date, but I'd take care of that eventually.

We were both in her room when she finally smiled and declared that we were done.

"And thank you so much." She put a hand on my chest. "I can't tell you how long I've been wanting to do this."

I wanted to tell her how long I'd wanted it, how long I'd been praying for this moment, for this opportunity. But I couldn't do that. Not yet.

"You want a beer?" She asked.

"A beer?" I blinked. "Sure."

I started to move toward her kitchen, but she stopped me. "Have a seat. Relax. I'll get it for you." She nodded towards the bed and winked before turning for the door.

I remained standing for a few seconds after she left. She'd invited me to sit on her bed. She was practically throwing herself at me.

Maybe I'd misread her conversation at the shop. Maybe the boy had been lying to his friends. I smiled and sat on the bed. She liked me. Of course she liked me. We were meant to be together, but I hadn't expected her to realize that.

I looked around the room.

Her tastes were interesting. Unlike the living room, her bedroom was muted. Almost dark, with an earthy feel. The furniture was mostly natural wood, and her covers were a dark grey.

And there were dozens of photographs on the wall. All of them were of bugs. I looked closer. Wasps. Her wall was entirely covered in pictures of wasps.

" _Hymenoptera pompilidae_." Michelle handed me a glass of beer and sat down a few inches away from me.

I could feel her body heat on my skin. I could hear her breathing. Goosebumps raced along my body. I took a deep drink to hide my nervousness. "Hymen, what?"

She laughed and punched me gently in the arm. " _Hymenoptera pompilidae._ A spider hawk." She nodded at the pictures. "That's what they are."

"Oh."

"They're fascinating creatures. You know how they nourish their young? They catch a spider. They'll sting it. Not enough to kill it, just enough to paralyze it. Then they drag it back to their burrow, lay eggs in it, and seal it up nice and tight. Eventually, the eggs become larvae, and the larvae consume the spider. They eat it from the inside out, saving the organs for last so that it's alive for as long as possible before they finally let it die."

"You, uh, you really like wasps, huh?"

"Oh yes." Her expression became deadly serious. "They're my power animal, you know."

"Your power animal?"

She nodded. "My yoga instructor does guided meditations, and he introduced us. It was a very big moment in my life."

"Oh," I replied. Uncertain of what to say, I took another long drink.

"Power animals are very important, you know. They guide us. They protect us. They teach us who we really are."

"I see." I didn't see. "I don't know what my power animal is."

"That's too bad. I can't tell you how much I've learned from my power animal."

"Like what?" I finished off my beer, never taking my eyes off of Michelle.

"Before I learned about my power animal, I lived like an insect. I thought that the fact that other people were bigger than me, stronger than me . . . I thought that made me prey. So I let people prey on me. Understanding what I am, what I truly am, I realize that I'm not weak. I'm the predator."

I opened my mouth to reply, but no words came out.

"The thing that I love most about my power animal isn't the fact that it's a predator, though. It's that it's a super predator. In the insect world, the spider is dangerous, powerful, one of the most fearful creatures out there. But to the spider hawk, it's a tool."

Something was wrong. I felt . . . wrong. I tried to stand, but my muscles weren't listening to me.

"Now, obviously, I can't use you like an incubator. For one thing, I'm not pregnant, but even if I were, feeding you to a baby can't be healthy."

She smiled and pinched my cheek as I slouched slowly over in the bed. "But I'm betting I can get at least a few good meals out of you before you die. Unless my date tonight turns out to be a vegetarian. Hmmm, I probably should have asked."

***

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### Shallow Graves

My first clue that something was wrong with Buster was the flies.

Flies had become an issue back when things fell apart. The rotting corpse of civilization became food for someone, at least, and for a little while afterwards the flies had become atrocious. Eventually, though, the population diminished all the way down to intolerable.

So it took me a little while to realize that more than usual were attracted to my dog. But when I did notice, I knew exactly what it meant.

"Calm down, Betty," I muttered to myself. "You're just being paranoid. He's a dog. Flies like dogs."

But I knew I was lying to myself. It was more than that. It wasn't as though Buster's problem was the worst thing that had ever happened on the farm. Truth to tell, it didn't even make the top ten. But while Buster wasn't the closest friend I'd ever lost, he was my last one.

No. No, I couldn't let myself think that way. Danny and Elise hadn't even been gone that long. Just over a year. Given the state of the car they took off in, and how hard it was to find usable gasoline these days, a year wasn't long at all. Even Carl, Simon and Bobbi could still be out there. I'd given up on the rest, though. Either they'd found a safe place and were staying there, or, more likely, they were dead.

And after Emily died and Bob shot himself, that just left me and Buster, waiting for the rest of them to come back.

I rubbed Buster behind the ears and told him he was all right, trying to convince myself that he'd just rolled over in something foul when I had my back turned.

Still, I kept him in sight as I worked in the garden that morning. He behaved normally. Well, except for being completely still the whole time. What dog doesn't scratch from time to time, or mark the fences, or chase his tail. Or something? Anything, really.

I collected the last of the broccoli and moved on to the brussels sprouts. I was getting tired of both, but if you want to survive the apocalypse, you have to make certain dietary sacrifices.

When things first started, we'd been in pretty good shape in terms of food. The garden hadn't started out quite so large, but we had the fruit trees, the pecan orchard, even chickens. When the cities started dying, we still had enough to eat, and some left over to trade with the refugees who came through.

But the refugees weren't the only ones to come through. After them came the hordes, and with the hordes the plague itself. It spread from humans to rodents, and from rodents to everything. It took half the herd in a single night. When we discovered what happened the next day, we slaughtered them all, the infected and the clean. We burned the bodies of the infected, then smoked as much of the meat from the clean ones as we could. The power had gone out long before, so freezing it wasn't an option. Most of the meat spoiled, but we got enough jerky to last for a long time.

After that, the chickens started to go. We didn't realize there was a problem until we cracked open an egg that had been laid rotten.

Now all I had to eat was an endless supply of beef jerky and whatever fruits or vegetables I could get to grow.

I pulled a few beets to add to my basket and headed back to the house with Buster close behind me. I glanced over my shoulder with almost every step, but he never got closer than his usual three steps back.

When the chickens first started turning, Emily used to wonder at how different they were than the people who turned. Bob said that the disease just worked differently on animals than people. Emily thought it was simpler than that; she claimed that the disease made everything act on their baser instincts, and since most animals were acting on instinct anyway, they didn't change their behavior much at all. They did turn violent eventually, but it took longer, and they only attacked creatures smaller than themselves, which hadn't worked out well for the cats, but was comforting for the rest of us.

People who turned, however, they went after everything. Anything that moved was fair game.

Maybe dogs were instinctively loyal. They were pack animals after all; when the cows turned, they didn't attack each other. Maybe Buster thought I was his pack.

Or maybe he just wasn't there yet, and I'd wake up one morning with his teeth wrapped around my throat.

At the back door I paused, setting my basket down so I could hang onto my shotgun while I unlocked the deadbolt. Vaguely I remembered a time when I would have put the gun down. If I thought really hard, I could even remember a time when the garden wasn't surrounded barbed wire.

I held the door open for Buster, who strolled over to his still-full food bowl and lay down on his rug.

The best thing was to take care of it right away. To take him out, put a bullet in the back of his head, clean up, and go about the rest of my day.

I sighed, rinsing my pickings off in the well water I'd pumped that morning. As with every day for the last year I had the amazing choice of salad or stew for dinner. Wet veggies or dry. For the thousandth time I found myself wishing I'd helped my mother cook back when I was a little girl. Maybe she could've taught me some trick to turn vegetables into ice cream. God how I missed ice cream.

As I ate the salad I found myself wishing, for the thousand and tenth time, that I had some kind of salad dressing.

After dinner I cleaned the plates in the well water, dried them, and slipped them back into their spots in the cabinet. It didn't occur to me until I was almost done that I'd spent almost twenty minutes with my back to Buster.

Cursing myself for a fool I picked up the shotgun and turned. Buster lay exactly where I'd left him. The only thing that moved were his eyes, following me across the room.

I needed to act. I needed to kill him now. The longer I waited, the more complacent I'd become. Aiming the gun at Buster I took a step forward.

It was Tuesday. Tuesdays we cleaned the traps. I lowered the shotgun and clicked my tongue. "Come on, Buster. Let's take a walk."

Buster stood and padded over to the front door.

We'd started on the traps after a small horde of the infected came at the farm. Only about fifty or so had attacked us, but we'd spent a lot of ammunition driving them back, and nobody had slept that night. The next morning Danny had proposed the traps. It hadn't taken much convincing. Digging the pits took a while, especially when we hit a layer of rock about a foot down, but they'd proven themselves well worth the effort when the larger waves started coming through. The only problem was that they had to be periodically cleaned out; otherwise the undead would stack up so high on the punji sticks that the next wave could walk over their backs.

These days I didn't have nearly as many to deal with, just the occasional straggler who wandered in, and from time to time an infected deer or boar, but I liked to keep the pits clean. One never knew when another wave might sweep the area, and every one of the bastards that speared himself to death was one less that I'd have to worry about up at the house.

On these walks, Buster kept ahead of me. He was on guard and alert, expecting trouble. Just the way Bob had trained him.

At the one pit that needed cleaning, he stood guard while I descended the small ramp we'd made for this exact use. I wore two pairs of gloves as I cut the piglet corpse off the spikes and hung its rotting meat from the bait hooks that hung over the pit.

When I finished the circuit, Buster let me lead the way back, taking position a few steps behind me, constantly scanning the area for trouble.

I tried again to convince myself that nothing was wrong; that Buster was perfectly healthy, maybe just a little out of sorts, but as I looked at him I noticed a small cut on his leg. It wasn't enough to incapacitate him, but on an uninfected dog it would have resulted in a limp, or whimpering, or something.

I turned away from Buster, biting my lip hard enough to draw blood.

As we approached the house, I veered toward the tool shed. Most of the tools had been moved to the house long before, but we'd decided years before to keep the tools that would come in contact with contaminated bodies away from where we slept and ate.

I deposited the tools for cleaning the traps in their bucket and grabbed an all-too-familiar shovel. Buster followed me as I headed over to a small fenced in section of the yard. Originally it had been a flowerbed, but the flowers were long gone, replaced by mounds of dirt, each one marked by stones, or wreaths, or crossed sticks.

Buster lay down a few feet away, his head on his paws, his eyes on me, as I leaned my gun against a stone marked 'Bob' and began to dig.

I found myself soaked in sweat in a matter of minutes but kept digging until I had a hole three feet deep, two feet wide, and four feet across.

Buster climbed to his feet when I whistled at him, and padded down into the hole, laying down at my command, his unblinking eyes still fixed on me.

I patted his head and rubbed behind his ears, whispering the kindest things I could think to say to a dog.

After a while I realized I was just putting things off. I leaned the shovel against Bob's marker and picked up the shotgun.

Buster didn't move as I leveled the weapon at his head. He just stared.

My hands shook as I pressed the stock against my shoulder. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and began to squeeze.

Only I couldn't. I just couldn't.

I shook my head, chided myself for a fool, and tried again. But, again, nothing happened. And all the while Buster lay there, staring up at me.

After the fifth failed attempt I wiped away my tears and lay the shotgun back against Bob's marker.

"Stay, Buster." I commanded. "Stay. Good boy."

Picking up the shovel, I began dumping dirt on top of the dog. Honestly, it came as a surprise when he didn't move.

A few more scoops and his head was covered. I picked up the shotgun again and aimed, but even without his eyes on me, I couldn't pull the trigger.

I put the shotgun back down and continued shoveling. Slowly, Buster disappeared. When I'd finished, I patted the dirt down and stared at the newest grave. He needed a marker of his own, but somehow putting a cross up didn't feel right. After a bit, I headed into the house, coming back with his dog bowl, which I half buried at the head of his grave.

That night, I dreamed of muffled howls and claws scratching at the front door.

The next day was harder than I expected. It wasn't like there was more work to do, like there had been every other time I lost a friend. In fact, there was less. I no longer needed to feed Buster, or groom him. I wouldn't have to worry about cleaning any of his hair off the furniture, or trying to find something for him to chew on.

Still, without him around, everything was a hundred times harder. Without Buster watching my back, I felt eyes on me whenever I left the house. Gardening alone was miserable and unending: I stopped my work at the slightest sound. Even my morning trip to the well to pump the day's water felt more exhausting.

I worked through the frustration, though, and the next day I found myself somewhat less miserable. The next day seemed somewhat less gloomy, as did the day after, and the day after.

By the end of the next week, I had embraced my new routine. Not to say that I was over the loss of Buster, but I didn't have to talk myself out of bed every morning. I was still more vigilant than I had been, though, which was why I noticed the wagon before it had even started down our quarter mile lane.

The lane was the one part of the farm we hadn't booby-trapped. The infected didn't seem to follow manmade routes, so we'd left it as it was in the hopes that survivors and traders would make their way to our front door.

When the mule-drawn wagon turned into our entrance I gathered together some fresh food and blankets and a few of the extra guns we'd accumulated over the years. Hopefully they'd have something decent to trade. Maybe some seeds that I didn't already have, or better yet, a puppy.

I actually teared up a little when that popped into my head.

By the time the wagon came to a stop in front of the house, I'd collected most of the tradable supplies I had into the living room and come up with a rough estimate of how highly I valued each one.

A tall man wearing a white shirt climbed down from the wagon and offered a smile that made me more than a little nervous. "Good day to you, ma'am."

"Good day." I answered back, keeping my shotgun aimed at the ground somewhere between us.

Another man, red from the sun with long hair and a stained shirt stayed on the seat next to the one the tall man had vacated. He didn't even look at me.

"You boys traders?" I asked.

"Among other things." The tall man's smile widened. "Have you got much to trade?"

I hesitated, then nodded. "A bit. Some fresh vegetables from the garden. Some tools. What about you?"

"Why we've recently come into possession of some very desirable property. Meat, fresh and uninfected."

Fresh meat? My mouth watered at the thought of it. "What kind?"

"Pork." The tall man looked amused. "Quality stuff, too. We've been enjoying it for the last couple of days, haven't we, Carter?"

The man on the wagon made a non-committal noise and continued staring anywhere but at me.

Pork. I could almost taste it. Cooked right it would last a while, and I could mix it into almost any meal. I licked my lips.

"And how certain are you that it's clean?"

"Oh, one hundred percent. Would you care to look over the merchandise?" The man waved towards the back of the wagon.

I bit my lip. I didn't much care for the tall man, though I couldn't put my finger on why, but the allure of meat, fresh meat at that, was more than I could pass up. Besides, the man was clearly unarmed. He'd dressed to showcase his lack of weapons. His friend, of course was carrying, but he hadn't laid a hand on one of his weapons yet.

"Are there any more of you in the back of that?"

"No, ma'am. Just us two."

"Uh huh." I grabbed a loaded forty-five off the mantle and tucked it into my belt. I was most comfortable with the shotgun, but if Bob had taught me one thing, it was that it was better to be too well armed, than too poorly armed. "Well, if you open that up and I see anyone else inside, I'll unload first and ask questions later."

The tall man chuckled. "I'd expect nothing less."

Keeping both men in view, and several paces away, I circled around to the back of the wagon. "So what exactly do you want in exchange for pork?" I asked, mostly to fill the silence.

"I'm sure we'll be happy to take whatever you have." The tall man answered.

When I came into position behind the wagon, the tall man moved over, taking the sheet in one hand with all the flair of a circus ringmaster. "Ready?"

"Sure."

His grin, already wide enough that it seemed capable of cutting his face in half, spread even further as he pulled.

I went numb.

From my head to my toes, my entire body lost all sensation. My mouth fell open, and the blood drained from my face.

Three bodies, three human bodies, hung from the top of the wagon in various stages of deconstruction. Large sections of flesh had been cut away from the nude corpses of a young man and an elderly couple.

I felt more than heard myself screaming as the shotgun was pulled out of my trembling fingers; then the butt of the weapon smashed into my face.

I woke up a few minutes later, bound and gagged in the back of the wagon, the tall man pressing a knee down on top of my chest as he looked over the .45.

My eyes quickly moved from my captor to the swaying bodies behind him.

My terrified reverie was broken moments later when the back flap was lifted away and the other man, Carter, entered. "We were lucky. Nobody else was inside. You've got to find a way to keep them from screaming like that."

The tall man snorted. "Luck, nothing. Look at her. What is she, fifteen? Who would let a girl like that answer the door if there was anyone else?"

Carter growled. "It's a farm. The rest of them could've been in the field. You've got to be more careful."

"Whatever. Did you find anything good?"

Carter nodded. "She's stocked up. Plenty of guns, plenty of tools. She's got enough beef jerky to last us a year."

The tall man slapped his side in excitement. "I told you we'd find something out this way, didn't I?"

Carter growled again.

"What?" The tall man turned towards his friend. "What's wrong with you now?"

Carter blinked. "That isn't me."

The two men turned towards the back of the wagon and froze.

Carter let out a scream as the dark, dirty mass of mottled skin and bone hit him like a two-by-four.

The tall man swung the .45 and fired wildly, a high-pitched whimper on his lips.

When the handgun emptied, he tossed it at the writhing mass and grabbed my shotgun from where it lay, bringing it to bear just a second too slow. The gun fell out of his grip as he gurgled for air, clutching at the giant hole in his throat.

In a matter of seconds the world became silent.

Shaking, I pulled myself into a sitting position and looked down at Buster, laying on top of the chest of the tall man. The dog's rotting face was buried in the man's chest. The wet chewing sound prevented me from looking any closer.

Looking around the wagon, I found a carving knife and set to cutting myself free. Buster glanced up at me once, the remains of his face breaking into a doggy grin before he went back to his meal.

"Good boy." I managed. "Good boy."

My first thought was to burn the wagon and its contents, but the shape of the world being what it was, I couldn't justify that.

Instead I used the carving knives to cut my attackers into bait and hung them a piece at a time over the pits. Then the carving knives went into the shed with the rest of the corrupted tools. I let the mules out into one of the overgrown pastures and broke the wagon down into fire wood. The guns the men had brought with them were added to my collection in the house.

As for the three bodies, I buried them in the makeshift graveyard. And then I buried Buster again. I didn't want to, but having an infected creature living with me, even a friendly one, just wasn't an option, and I certainly couldn't bring myself to shoot him after what he'd done.

So, lacking any better ideas, I buried him again, although not nearly as deep.

***

Return to Table of Contents

### A Terrible Itch

It was a terrible itch. He had scratched himself raw and bloody, and each new scratch brought on such pain as he had never experienced before. In point of fact, the only thing more intolerable than the pain when he scratched was the itch when he didn't.

The itch was merciless. The itch was incessant. The itch was everything.

Five days ago, when it had started, he had gone to the ship's doctor. The old man had told him it was probably an allergy and given him a cream for it. Fool that he was, he had actually used it. On that first day it had quelled his suffering. On the second day it had soothed his misery. It had even helped cool the pain on the third day, though he had been forced to spread it on in globs so thick that his coworkers had spent the day snickering at the grease stains on his clothing.

It wasn't until the end of the third day that he realized that it was the cream that was making it worse. That was the only possible explanation. The doctor had given him something that would ease his torment for a little while, then make it a thousand times more unbearable.

He knew why, too: the doctor hated him. He should have anticipated that. He should have known. The doctor was an old man. He was an old, fat, bald man. An ugly man. There was no doubt he envied the ensign. The old bastard envied and hated him.

The ensign had tried to get help. He had tried to explain the situation to the captain and the first officer, but they both brushed him off. Inconceivable, but it was true. They had waved away his accusations as unfounded, insisted that he was having some allergic reaction and that he should see the doctor again. That he should see the very man that had done this to him. It was so bizarre, so unreasonable.

Then, in a flash, it had come to him. It was so obvious. They were all in on it together!

The captain's involvement made sense; he was an old man as well. A jealous old man, just like the doctor. But the first officer was a young woman; surely she could see that he was being made to suffer, that he was being tormented by vicious old men.

But somehow she didn't.

Or maybe she did. She was unusually young for her post. She had to be smart enough to see it. Of course! She was protecting her position. That had to be it. That was the only explanation: she knew, but she was protecting herself. Protecting herself at his expense. Well, he'd take care of that; they wouldn't treat him like an animal. He was no dog to be kicked on whim. No, he'd strike back. They would respect him. They would have to. He knew just how to hurt them. He had been working ships all his life, and he knew where they were weak. He knew where to hit so they'd all feel it.

***

The June Skipper, a freighter carrying equipment and supplies to the colony of Illean 4, was a full three weeks into its six week trip when all of its secondary systems shut down.

The systems failure was the first major problem on the freighter in eight runs, and when the lights suddenly dimmed and the humming faded down to the soft, low throbbing of the ship's hardwired functions, Captain Bennat found himself surprisingly excited. Things had been running so smoothly for so long that he was beginning to feel a bit obsolete, like old hardware that hadn't been scrapped just yet, but was on the list.

He had been a military captain for most of his career and had served with distinction. He would still be serving with distinction had he not had the misfortune to be serving under the wrong man at the wrong time. Not that he had anything to do with the scandal, but his commander had done his damnedest to see that the blame was spread as wide and as far as possible.

After his strongly encouraged resignation, Captain Bennat had found himself suddenly immersed in a job market where most of his skills were meaningless. His tactical brilliance and resolve were important when facing down a fleet, but when all you had to do was fly from point A to point B, they were somewhat less necessary. Thankfully he had friends who had left the military before him, though it was strange to find himself suddenly working for a man he used to give orders to.

It had been hard to adjust. For years he had been a leader of men with things to do and people who needed him; these days he could go months without making a decision more pressing than what color to paint the hull. But now, at long last, something was happening. The excitement faded quickly, and the wheels in his mind, rusty from disuse, began turning once again. He jogged through the halls, making his way to the main bridge, located at the center of the ship.

"What happened?"

The ensign at the engineering console looked up, flustered. "Still working on it, sir. My screen was fine, then all the sudden . . ." he shrugged, at a loss for an explanation. "Well, it just sort of all went off line. I mean, it must be a problem in the regulator room. That's the only place all secondary systems are connected, but even there . . . All I can think is that the problem is hardware. I'll have to check it out."

"Go."

The man scurried off. The first officer, hair still wet and pulling on the jacket of her uniform, passed the petty officer on her way in.

"Commander." He nodded to his first officer, Jeya Shoan, as he made his way to the engineering console. She had been an officer under his command during his military days, and while her resignation was not in any way officially linked to his own, the timing was strangely convenient, as was the fact that she was hired as first officer of this ship days after it was assigned to him.

"Captain." She nodded back. "What's going on?"

"Don't know. I just got in myself. Been working out?"

"Swimming."

The captain nodded and turned back to the console looking for working systems. He winced. The communications systems were down, both the onboard systems, and the long-range comm. Hell, even the lighting systems weren't responding, leaving them in the dull glow of the luminesce plastics used around the ship for exactly this kind of situation. The emergency life support systems were working, but nobody had ever really expected them to be used, so the equipment was poorly designed and barely maintained. It only just kept the air breathable. He could very nearly taste it growing stale. Even the primary heating system was down. In the cold of space that would become an issue very quickly. The only onboard computers still working were the ones with independent power supplies. Whatever had happened, it was bad, and it would take some doing to fix.

"Dammit."

"I concur." His first officer had been reading over his shoulder, normally a habit he found annoying, but there were more important things weighing on his mind.

"Shoan, go down to engineering, grab everyone you can, and I mean anyone who isn't holding the ship together with their teeth, and get them down to the regulator room. I want to know what's going on, and I want it fixed, and I mean yesterday."

"Sir." She saluted sharply and headed for the door.

"Jenson," the over-tall man at the helm turned slightly. Born on a low gee world, he was considered by his people to be short at a mere nine feet. On board the one gee ship he was forced to wear an exo-skeletal bracing system over most of his body, lest he collapse into a heap of broken bones on the floor.

"Yes sir?"

"Check out any nearby planets, in case we need to make an emergency landing. Oh, and get me an ETA for the nearest populated systems, in case it turns out we need professional repairs."

"Sir."

"Laea."

The elderly woman inclined her head in his direction in acknowledgement.

"I want some numbers on how long we can last with diminished systems. I also want to know exactly what systems we have lost. Full assessment as soon as possible."

Laea nodded assent and turned back to her console. She was the only officer who had lived onboard longer than the captain. They'd been working together for the past three years, and to date she had spoken less than a dozen words in his presence. Some of her previous commanders had reprimanded her for it, but as her work was consistently above par, Captain Bennat had decided to leave well enough alone.

The captain began to go over the console readouts himself. They just didn't add up. The systems were designed to interact and react to one another, but they were specifically not integrated in any way that would allow a program glitch to shut down all the systems like this. In theory each system was supposed to be protected from whatever flaws might show up in the others. The ensign had been right; the only logical reason for this sort of problem would be hardware related. But the room was heavily protected against explosions, which meant that sabotage was the most likely cause. Sabotage had been a serious concern in the Captain's military days, but the ship he now flew simply wasn't important enough to be attacked.

"Sir!" The ensign he had sent out moments before was at was at the door panting, and looking more than a little upset.

"What? Have you located the problem?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, out with it. What happened?"

"It's Ensign Lainer, Sir! He's gone crazy!"

"What? Who?"

***

"Eh, it's not pretty, but you should heal up okay."

The captain waited impatiently while the doctor gave the injured security officer the necessary antibiotics and instructions for taking them. She was the last of the personnel to be treated. The jagged cut along her arm was among the least severe of the many injuries.

"So? What is it? What's wrong with him?"

The doctor hushed the captain quietly, watching as the security officer exited the room. "Sorry, sir. I just don't think this is the sort of thing you want getting out."

"What? What is it?"

The doctor waved for the captain to follow and headed to the back room. The ensign responsible for the damage was in one of the isolation wards. He looked to be somewhere between extremely psychotic and positively rabid.

"Can't you give him something to calm him down?"

"I did. Three times the standard dosage. Half again as much as I'm supposed to legally."

The captain let that sink in for a moment. "So what is it? What's wrong with him?"

The doctor shook his head and tapped on the thick, clear metal separating them from the clearly deranged ensign, who was, at that moment, pacing from one side of the emergency isolation ward to the other, seething and foaming at the mouth, still scratching at patches of tattered, bleeding flesh through his even more tattered uniform.

"I'll tell you, captain, it wasn't an easy diagnosis to make. Especially with my database and all of the scanners down. Do you know how long it's been since I've had to make a diagnosis from the books? Some of those things are so old the pages broke in my hands."

"Well, I'll be sure to put in a request for new books at our next stop. Now, what did you find? What happened to him? He was never a model crewman, but this is completely outside his character."

The doctor raised an eyebrow, "So you knew him well?"

"Well . . . it's completely outside of his character as described by the personnel file Shoan gave me on him."

"Ah. Well, you're right, of course. The company tends to avoid hiring folks who foam at the mouth and bash computer consoles with heavy metal poles."

"Doctor, please?"

"I checked my records, and apparently he came in complaining about an itchy rash just under a week ago. I assumed it was just an allergic reaction. In retrospect I should have ran a few tests, but at the time I had other things on my mind. Anyhow, I gave him a topical cream that probably just numbed the skin for a day or two. Long enough for the dementia to set in."

"So do you or don't you know what he has?"

"Well, I think I do. As it turns out, the ensign came on board after a brief vacation, visiting his parents on Balla 2. He made it back to the ship fifteen days before it became an officially quarantined planet."

"The whole planet?"

"The whole planet. Apparently they had an outbreak of Pharrat."

The captain furrowed his brow. The word was familiar, but it took him a moment to place it. His pupils dilated notably as the memory hit him suddenly. "Pharrat? The plague? I thought they wiped that out decades ago."

"They did. But, as I understand it, a few facilities kept the virus on hand; working on a cure just in case it popped up somewhere else. That's the official story anyhow. More likely they wanted to see if it could be mutated into a more effective, controllable, biological weapon. Balla 2 had several hazardous material medical stockpiles and research facilities on the planet. There must have been an accident. We are a little bit lucky, though. His symptoms are consistent with type three Pharrat. The downside to type three is that it causes paranoia and violent outbursts. The upside, however, is that it usually does not become contagious until the very last stage. The stage wherein the infected person goes into convulsions, then a coma, then dies. So there's a good chance that nobody else has been infected."

"Well that's good. What about him? What can we do for him?"

The doctor grimaced. "Your history books didn't explain how they wiped out Pharrat, did they? Nobody was ever able to find a cure. In the end the government simply quarantined every planet with known or suspected cases and let the planetary municipalities handle the details until they were convinced everyone with the disease was dead. Usually the people in charge simply locked all their doors, covered their ears, and waited for the situation to handle itself. It was a pretty nasty affair."

The captain paled a little at the thought. He shook his head, forcing himself to focus on the problem at hand. "So, how certain are we that nobody else was infected?"

The doctor bit his lip, thinking it over. "Well, this does have all the signs of being type three, but there were a few instances where researchers suspect a victim became contagious early. There's also a chance that somebody was playing with the genetic structure and we're dealing with a new strand. I'd say I'm seventy to eighty percent sure we're safe."

The captain raised an eyebrow. He was not especially knowledgeable about Pharrat. All he knew was what he had learned in school. It was one of the six great plagues that mankind had encountered in its exploration of the stars. The effects had been devastating. Millions upon millions had died. He had not been aware that there was no cure for it, but now that he was . . .

"That isn't good enough. Is there any way we can test the crew for it, any preventative vaccine we can give?"

"There is no vaccine. There are tests, but none we can give with the computers down. Really the only thing we can do is wait and see if anyone starts to develop symptoms." He watched the captain for a moment. "A nasty situation. How do you plan to handle it?"

Captain Bennat shook his head. "I don't want to be the man responsible for starting another epidemic. We're going to set down somewhere uninhabited to make repairs. I want to be a hundred percent sure nobody is infected before we finish this trip."

"Aye, sir."

"Also, we don't want a panic on board. Nobody outside of you and me is to hear a word about this. And I mean not a word."

"That is something of a given, Captain."

***

"Do you want the good news or the bad news first, sir?" Jenson looked like a grown man in a three year old's chair. The Captain had considered special ordering a seat for him, but it was the sort of thing that was rather easy to move to the bottom of the shopping list when the budget got tight, as it always did. Fortunately the giant was accustomed to living in an inconveniently small world.

"Let's start with the bad."

"The regulator room may as well have been ejected into space. Almost nothing in there is even salvageable. The company is going to be very, very angry about this. We're looking on spending two trips worth of profits on the repairs when we reach our next port."

The captain grimaced. "And the good news?"

"We do have the supplies on board to rig up makeshift regulating units for the two most important systems: the heating and the air recyclers. And we're less than two days away from a habitable, Type 1 planet."

"What do we know about the planet?"

"Not a lot. Currently it's uncolonized. So far only a prelim team has visited it; they had very encouraging remarks. The word 'paradise' came up more than once. A secondary research group is supposed to be starting a more intensive examination prior to colonization. The atmosphere and gravity are both near Earth's. Flora and simple fauna are already flourishing, the microorganisms have no discernable effect on humans, and the water supply appears to be drinkable. Ideal."

"Well then. It sounds like the perfect place to make repairs."

The Captain dismissed his command crew with a nod, quietly tucking away the report Laea, had given him just before the meeting. According to her, they would be able to make it to their destination quite easily, though not in perfect comfort, without the assistance of any of the secondary systems, except of course heating, which could be rigged in about a day. Bennat was confident that the quiet woman was not planning on sharing that little tidbit with anyone else. Shoan had her own copy of the report, but she had been working with him long enough to know when not to ask questions.

The medical facility, like all of the other systems, had been shorted out. Their substantial database had been lost, and all of the equipment had been rendered useless. Thankfully, Captain Bennat was able to find a handheld library he had brought on board years before. He spent the duration of the trip locked in his office, studying everything he could about Pharrat. He was, after all, a military man, and military men like to know their enemy. The more he knew, the less he wanted to know.

They made landfall in the middle of a flat, and beautiful field. The area was in full bloom with low-lying, white flowers stretching as far as the eye could see. It was as close to heaven as the captain could ever remember being. He had half a mind to arrange for another mechanical problem on the way back, just to visit the place again. Actually, he might want to do more than visit.

"It is lovely. But somehow I don't think you can afford enough of it to retire on."

The Captain turned around, "You know, Shoan, you've really got to stop doing that."

"Sneaking up on you, or reading your mind?"

"Both, either, whatever."

She smiled. Shoan was no psychic, but as much time as she had spent under her captain, she didn't have to be to figure him out. Some of the crew joked that they were like an old married couple.

"Repairs are under way. They think they'll be able to get most of the systems up and running, but permanent repairs will have to wait till we put into port."

The captain nodded, "Well, it's not that important. Just make sure that everyone stays busy till the doctor can confirm no symptoms."

In point of fact he had not informed her of the details of their situation. But he was confident she had a good idea. Besides being intuitive she was one of the most intelligent officers who had ever served under him.

"How long will that be?"

"As best as the doctor has been able to calculate, it took right about at fifteen days for the ensign's symptoms to show up. We've had him in quarantine for the last three days, so just to be on the safe side, we should probably give it, say, two and a half weeks."

The first officer nodded, "I'm sure our buyer will be upset, but there are worse things. Are you going to want to oversee the repairs?"

"No. I trust you. Besides, it's been years since I stopped to smell the flowers, and there are a lot of flowers here to smell."

The first officer smiled. She was planning to spend some time out in the fields herself. They were just too lovely to pass up. The fields themselves would actually help with protracting the work until the deadline. As much as there was to be done, she knew quite well that it wouldn't take more than a week to finish it at the usual work rates. But nobody would complain or question a more relaxed schedule when there was such rare beauty to be enjoyed.

***

The captain winced at the sudden realization that he was scratching his arm again. His skin was not quite so red or raw as that of most of the crew, but he was still in pain. Everyone was; even the stoic Laea's face was a constant grimace of discomfort these days.

"Well, I guess there's no question now."

The doctor was gnawing on his lower lip, though whether it was simple aggravation or an attempt to alleviate an itch there while his arms were busy clawing at each other was questionable.

"No, not really."

"About how long until the dementia begins to set in, doctor?"

"I don't know . . . days, I suppose. I wish there were something we could do. Anything. I destroyed the ensigns body as soon as he died, so there's no chance the infection occurred after . . . I'm afraid we must be dealing with a new strain."

"Communications are still down. They tell me there's something broken that we can't fix, so we can't warn anyone off." The captain forced himself, through sheer force of will, to put his hands at his sides and leave them there.

"And we can assume that a crew was sent after us as soon as they realized we'd changed our course. That gives us, what? Four days until another ship shows up?" the doctor asked.

"More like five or six. Still . . ."

"By then whoever is left will be completely demented, and by the time they figure out what's going on they'll be infected. And depending on how long they take to head back to main port . . ."

An old resolve found foothold and stood up inside the captain. "We can't let that happen."

The doctor nodded a depressed consensus. "Does the crew know?"

The captain shook his head. "No, they know something's going on, but they have no idea what. It's not like Pharrat comes up in casual conversations these days. According to Shoan, more than a few think we've picked up some sort of virus here. They're not aware of the physiological incompatibility of our bodies to the native microorganisms. Well, Laea is, but . . . she hasn't brought it up."

"What are we going to do?"

"Well . . ." the captain contemplated. "The most important thing is that we need to handle the situation now. We're already dead; we just need to make sure we don't take anyone else with us. I will not be responsible for an epidemic."

They sat in silence for a few moments, both coming to grips with the realization of their inescapable doom.

The doctor nodded sadly. "I guess there's no other way."

"No. Any ideas how?"

The doctor considered. "Actually yes, I know just the thing. We've got a stockpile of chemicals in the medical supplies. I can mix a few together into an odorless gas; a few drops in the ventilation system and we'll all drift off to sleep and never wake up again."

The captain sighed. "That's probably our best option."

The stood in awkward silence for a few moments. "It's been a privilege serving with you doctor."

"You too, sir."

***

To: Fleet Commander Micca Callus

From: Investigative Team Coordinator Rella Victor

Re: Fate of June Skipper

Sir, after a month long, intensive investigation, we are still not completely certain as to the reason for the loss of the June Skipper. It does appear that the captain was involved in the death of the crew; however, the fire that resulted when the combustible gas used to kill the crew was ignited destroyed most of his diary.  The senior members of the team petition five members to two to close and file this case, as we do not believe any further progress can be made.

Post Script:  Re: The colonizing potential of the planet

The planet is gorgeous and quite livable, as determined by preliminary teams; however, please attach an addendum to the file that while the planet is mostly a paradise, the pollen of a particularly abundant flower here has a slight toxicity to it which results in a terrible itch.

***

Return to Table of Contents

### Desperate Times

I paused in front of the house, my heart beating out of my chest. This was the point of no return. I had a choice to make: to remain a law abiding, if rather broke, citizen, or to cross the line in the sand and join the ranks of criminals and thieves. Tonight I would find out who I was.

After a deep breath, I asked my flask for his opinion. The whiskey put forward his two cents, and, properly motivated, I stepped forward.

Surprisingly, the world didn't shift beneath my feet. Floodlights didn't come on; police didn't swarm; and Satan didn't reach up from the pits of hell to drag me down to my damnation.

The porch light was off, thankfully. At this time of night, it probably didn't matter. It was unlikely that anybody was up, and if they were up, they weren't likely to glance out the window and see me.

Lock picking had been a hobby of mine for years. It's a neat party trick. It's also useful if you're the sort of person who loses keys from time to time. I'd never intended to turn it into a career. Even after I'd been fired, after my unemployment ran out, after I'd sold half my furniture, I didn't expect to end up here.

I'd avoided it for as long as I could, but I was in debt up to my eyeballs, and nobody seemed to be interested in hiring a guy who wasn't bilingual or computer savvy, no matter how reliable he was.

Damned economy.

The lock wasn't impressive. I had it open in less than a minute. The deadbolt would have been a bigger challenge, but apparently the occupant didn't think deadbolts were important.

I could only hope that this would change his mind.

The house was as dark as the porch. I checked that my gloves were on securely and pulled up the hood on my jacket.

I closed the door behind me, grateful for how quiet the house was. The person who'd hired me for this job, whoever he or she was, told me that the owner would be out for most of the night, but plans change, and people do unexpected things. I wanted as little noise as possible, just in case. And this house was ideal for that. The carpeting was thick enough to muffle footsteps, and the stairs, which I climbed as slowly as I could, didn't creak or groan.

At the top of the stairs I paused. The moon and street lamps had lit the downstairs enough for me to see, but here the darkness was as thick as a blanket.

The third door on the left led me into the study.

The room was tidy. Organized enough to make me wonder if the owner of the house was obsessive compulsive. I walked over to the shelf behind the desk, reaching behind the books. Sure enough, the box was there. I smiled as I pulled it out and set it in front of me, staring for a moment before I opened it.

The box was empty.

My smile melted. I ran my fingers along the inside of the box. The coins weren't there. The coins my buyer had wanted me to steal. The coins that would pay my rent for three months.

I turned, still staring into the box clutched in my hands as I headed for the staircase, where the moonlight would confirm my failure.

I barely had time to register the figure moving in the darkness when something hard and heavy made contact with the back of my head, and the world went black.

***

I opened my eyes, groaning. My head felt like a swollen ball of nerves. The rest of me was just cold. I was lying on concrete. Cold, hard concrete. And I was naked.

The house. The box. The attack. It came tumbling back into me like a bad dream.

He had hit me, then . . . then . . . what? Was I in prison? If so, why was I naked?

I started to stand, but my head hit something hard and I collapsed back onto the ground, into an unpleasant, squishy pile of what I suspected was either my own vomit, or excrement. Both, by the smell.

Again, it took me several seconds to force myself off the ground.

The only lights in the room were two glowing light switches. One at the top of the stairs and one a few feet away from me. It wasn't enough to give me a clear view of the room, but I could make out a few things.

I was in a cage. The sort of thing you'd expect to see a wild animal in. The bars were thick and set close enough together that even if I could have gotten my hands on what I'd need to jimmy the lock, I wouldn't be able to reach through to unlock it.

There were stairs leading to a door. From the look of it, I was in a basement. Was I being kept here for the police? Were they already on their way?

A fear rose in my belly, twisting around and around, tying my intestines into one giant knot, and making my heart race so fast I thought I might pass out. I couldn't afford to go to prison. Getting a job without specialized skills was hard enough, but getting a job with a rap sheet?

I twisted around and kicked the front of the cage, kicked it over and over again, ignoring the pain in my feet, ignoring the feel of the filth and sickness around me. Ignoring everything until I had exhausted myself. Until I was too tired to be afraid.

It was a while afterwards that the door finally opened. I couldn't say how long. Being alone in the dark has a way of stripping away any meaning time might otherwise have.

The man walked down the stairs, ignoring the glowing light switch. He moved silently, except for the soft jingling of keys. I couldn't make out his face, but I could feel him watching me.

There was very little hope. But I had to try. "I'm sorry."

The man didn't respond.

"I wasn't here to hurt you. I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't hurt anyone. I just . . . you were supposed to have some coins. Some rare coins. And I needed the money. That's all. I shouldn't have done it; I know that, but I was desperate. I can't find a job, and I'm literally a week away from being evicted. I panicked. I went online and this guy . . . this guy offered me some money, really good money to steal some coins from you, and I figured, you know, if you had enough money for the coins and a house to keep them in, then maybe you could afford to lose the coins."

The man didn't respond. Didn't move.

"It's an excuse, I know, but it's all I have. I wouldn't have done this, but he told me that nobody would be home. That nobody would get hurt. He told me I'd be in and out in ten minutes, and I'd be looking at nearly a thousand bucks."

"I know."

I blinked and stared. The man hadn't moved, and for a moment I thought maybe I hadn't heard him speak.

Then the lighter flared. He was in his late fifties, maybe older, with graying hair and wrinkling skin with a cigarette held between his teeth. He looked normal. Completely normal. Like a man I'd passed on the street a thousand times and never noticed, and maybe I had. But he'd never been looking at me like that before. I would have remembered that smile. That vicious, angry smile.

"You know?"

He lit the cigarette and put out the lighter. "I hired you."

I stared at him, bewildered. "You hired me? To rob you? Of something you didn't even have?"

"How else was I going to get you into my house?"

It was fortunate that I was already on the ground, because if I had been standing, I probably would have fallen. "What? You're some kind of vigilante? Set up a criminal with a bogus theft then give him to the police? Look, I made a mistake, but I'm not a bad man. I'm just desperate. Please!"

He gave a sharp bark of a laugh. "You think I care?"

"Then why would you want me here?"

He was silent again, long enough that I was afraid he might not respond at all. Finally he spoke. "Do you hunt?"

"What?"

"There are two ways to hunt. Two very different ways. The first, the more sporting of the two, frankly, is to pursue your prey. You learn their habits, you learn their tells, and you go get them. It's exhilarating. But it's dangerous. I started with whores. If you're going to hunt human, that's the best place to start. It's not like they sign in and out. It's not like anyone expects to be able to reach them whenever they want. So if one disappears, it's going to be a little while before anyone notices. Eventually, after the first few, word starts to get around. Heads start turning; people start paying attention. The more you take, the riskier it gets."

I felt lightheaded, confused. I understood what the man was saying, but I couldn't bring myself to believe it.

He smiled at my expression. "When I'd learned the skills, when I'd mastered my craft, I started going after more dangerous prey. You wouldn't believe the exhilaration. In my prime, boy, in my prime I was a god."

I swallowed in fear, backing away from the man as much as the cage would allow. He was mad. He was completely mad.

"Eventually, as I got older, less able to endure the pursuit, I realized that I'd have to settle for what I could pull off. I had to fall back on the second type of hunting. The kind where you bring the prey to you."

The light was off on the front porch, the deadbolt undone. I got in quickly, without anyone seeing me. No one would ask who I was or what had happened. The carpet had padded my footsteps; they'd pad the steps of someone sneaking up behind me. The darkened upstairs that hid me, had hid him. The entire house was a trap.

I felt my mouth go dry, and my mind raced, searching for something he'd forgotten, something he'd missed. I hadn't told anyone I was coming, except the man who'd hired me. I'd been careful not to approach the house until I was sure nobody was on the street to watch me.

"My car!" I blurted. "When they look for me, they'll find my car near here. Let me go, and I'll just go. I'll take my car, and I'll disappear."

There was a soft chuckle from the man in front of me.

"Where do you think I've been for the last hour?"

I heard the rattle of keys in his hand. "I work in a junkyard. By this afternoon your car will be reduced to a few valuable parts and a crushed cube of steel. And as for you. In a few days there won't be enough of you left to identify. In fact, in a few days the only thing that will tie you and I together in any way at all, are these keys. I know. I know. I should get rid of them. But we all need our mementoes, don't we?"

With that he reached over and flipped the switch, bathing the room in light.

There was another cage in the room, across from me, empty but for bloodstains. And there was a table in the middle of the room with leather straps and an array of things I didn't want to think about.

But the thing that caught my eye, the thing that froze me in stark horror, was the wall across the room from me. The wall was covered in tiny, perfectly spaced hooks, from floor to ceiling, from one side to the other. And on almost every single hook, there was a set of keys.

The man watched me for a moment, enjoying my terror. Then he turned, walked casually over to the wall, and placed my keys on one of the few remaining open hooks.

My eyes remained fixed on that spot. Even after he had gone, shutting the light off behind him, leaving me alone in the darkness.

***

Return to Table of Contents

### A Gambling Man

Connor groaned as he was lifted from the floor and carried to the lone chair sitting at his kitchen table.

He offered no resistance as one of the men tied his right arm down. A small corner of his mind screamed at him that something bad was coming. Something worse than the beating he'd just endured. But Connor couldn't bring himself to do anything about it. Everything hurt. Breathing hurt. Not breathing hurt. It hurt to think about how much he hurt.

One of the men left the room. The other was busy somewhere nearby, looking through drawers, by the sound of it.

Connor wondered if the man was looking for money. There wasn't any. Connor would have been happy to pay anything he had.

After a few seconds, he felt one of the thugs grab his hair and pull his head back. A wad of dirty, knotted cloth slipped between his teeth causing him to gag. The thug released his hair, and Connor sagged back down.

Then more noise. The second man returned.

Someone grabbed Connor's left arm and pulled it forcefully onto the table. A hand grabbed Connor's hair and tilted his face so that he could see what was happening.

"Mr. Gruber is very upset." The thug holding his hand shook his head in disappointment. "You owe him money. A lot of money. And you haven't paid anything in over a month. Mr. Gruber is worried that you aren't taking your debt seriously."

Connor tried to talk, but between the pain and the gag, nothing came out.

"Mr. Gruber is a reasonable man, but faced with an unreasonable situation, he feels that he needs to make his position clear."

The thug lifted a pair of garden shears into view. Connor didn't remember seeing them before. They were too big to fit into a pocket, and Connor wondered briefly how the men had brought them in without him seeing.

The man behind Connor grabbed him around the chest and braced, while the man in front pulled Connor's pinky out of his fist and set the mouth of the sheers around it.

Connor stared, not certain what to make of it, but convinced that he didn't have enough energy even to cry out.

He was wrong.

As the sheers closed, all other pain was forgotten. Connor's body spasmed, and he tried desperately to pull away from the source of his agony. The world went red, then white, and every muscle in his body trembled from effort.

After what felt like forever, Connor collapsed in his seat, sobbing through the gag.

His eyes half open and watering, he watched as the man who had just maimed him lifted his finger and tossed it across the apartment into the sink.

"Mr. Gruber wants to remind you that you have nine more fingers. He's giving you one week to come up with the money. After that, he's taking the rest and a lot more. He wants his money, but if he has to make an example out of you, it's going to be the kind of example people remember for the rest of their lives."

The thug moved the shears towards Connor, who tried to twist away from the offending implement but found himself unable, thanks to the continued grip of the man behind him.

The shears pressed against the flesh of his right arm, slipping under the twine that held it to the chair, then snapping down.

Connor slumped forward, his head coming to rest on the rough surface of the table. He made a soft whimpering sound as the two men walked out of the room, shutting the door behind them.

Connor pressed the palm of his right hand against the stump that had been his left pinky and cried into the table.

After some time, it occurred to him that the men hadn't locked the door behind them. There wasn't really anything in the apartment worth stealing, but in a neighborhood like this one, there was no telling who might come wandering through an unlocked front door and what they might want.

Still pressing his hand against his bleeding finger, he forced himself up and stumbled to the door to lock it.

Connor leaned his head against the wall, wheezing from the effort.

When he turned around, he was surprised to find a man sitting at his table, holding his severed pinky.

"You'd think that a smart business man like Mr. Gruber would know how hard it is for a man to come up with seventy-five thousand dollars in seven days, much less when he has to spend an entire day recovering from a beating like that."

Connor stared at the intruder blankly for several seconds, trying to sort out if someone had snuck in before he could lock the door or if he was hallucinating. He looked kind of like a hallucination, what with the jet black suit and tinted shades, but Connor had been hurt before, at least this badly, and he'd never started seeing things.

In the end, he decided that it didn't matter. Connor pointed at his pinky. "Hey. That's mine."

"This?" The man in the chair shook his head and, using the fingernails of his thumb and pointer, began to peel the flesh off of the severed digit. "Don't be ridiculous, Connor. You don't have time to go the emergency room and make up a fake name and a story about how you lost it. You've got a hundred and sixty eight hours to come up with seventy-five grand. That's over four hundred and forty six dollars an hour. Given that your best job to date was at that furniture store, and that only paid -- what was it? Twelve dollars and change? -- I'm thinking you might be in trouble."

Connor's eyes stayed locked on the finger. "I don't need to come up with all of it. Just enough to buy myself some time."

"So, what, ten thousand, maybe? So sixty dollars an hour for a week straight? Sure, that's only mildly impossible." The man continued to pick the flesh from the finger. "You could start a class on how not to manage your money. Put up some flyers. You could even teach the class right here, a shining example of where people will end up if they follow your example."

"No, I can do this. There's a high school game at six tonight. There're always people willing to bet there. I only need to come up with a hundred, maybe two hundred. Then I can turn that into some real money at one of the poker games tonight. I can come up with ten grand by the end of the week. I've done it before."

The man in the chair rolled his eyes. "You've fallen so far and for so long, and you still can't even admit the truth to yourself. You did it once. You had one fantastic week where you made eleven thousand six hundred and seventy eight dollars. Once in your life. And then what did you do, Connor? Huh? You kept gambling. You kept betting, and you lost it all. Every penny. That's what you do. You place bet after bet until there's nothing left. And that first game, how are you going to pay for that first bet? You don't have a nickel to your name. You could suck someone's cock, I suppose. You haven't done that since you got out of prison, but it's like riding a bike, isn't it? You never really forget how, no matter how hard you try."

Connor went white. "How do you know about that?"

The man at the table tilted his head back and laughed. "Five minutes we talk, and it doesn't occur to him to ask until I bring up his time as a bitch. Oh, I do like you, Connor." The man finished skinning Connor's finger. "I've always had a soft spot for losers," he continued, as he pried the fingernail off of the finger.

"Who ARE you?"

The man sighed, popped the skinned finger in his mouth, and began chewing. Connor could hear the bone crunching from across the room.

"What are you?" Connor whispered.

The man smiled. "Who I am, what I am, these are interesting questions, but they aren't particularly relevant, are they? The real question, the only one you need to concern yourself with, is what you're going to do next."

Connor grimaced. "There are a few plasma places in town. I can sell at two or three of them. That'll give me enough for the high school game."

"More blood?" The man pointed at Connor's hand. "You sure you've got enough to spare? It may be more pleasant than sucking a dick, but you don't want to make bets when you're half conscious, now, do you?"

"Well, what do you suggest!?" The gambler stumbled across the room, sinking to his knees half way between the table and the door. "What am I going to do?"

"You're going to gamble," the man answered, his expression approaching contempt. "It's what you do. The only question is what you're going to bet on. So tell me, are you going to risk your wellbeing, your very existence, on a thousand tiny bets that you have no control over? Are you going to put your life on the line when the smallest detail, a bump on a basketball, a cheating girlfriend, a misstep in the middle of a play, might cost you everything? Or are you going to bet on yourself, for once."

"Bet on myself?" Connor shook his head. "I'd rather bet against myself. The way my luck's been going, it's the smart move."

"Luck." The man at the table snorted. "You really believe in that, don't you? That the universe is centered around you, and that every loss you take is fortune, slapping you in the face. It's pathetic. The universe no more cares how its machinations affect you, than an elephant cares how the flies like the shit it feeds them. Be a man. Take responsibility for your life."

Connor looked down at his hand. He needed to tie a handkerchief around it, or something. "What's the bet?"

"Ten souls." The man paused, looking at Connor's hand. "Oh, what the hell, let's call it nine, just to make it easier for you to count. You get me nine souls in the next seven days, and you won't owe anyone anything."

Connor blinked. "So, you're supposed to be the devil, then?"

"The devil? Hardly. You don't warrant his attention. I'm just a . . . what would you call it? A sub-contractor?"

"I don't believe in the devil. Or souls."

"Great." The thing smiled. "That'll make it easier for you. People who do believe, they get all touchy-feely and wuss out when push comes to shove."

Connor stared at the man. He wanted to argue more, but he didn't have the energy. "How?"

"How is up to you. Buy them. Trade for them. Do a few of your little prison favors."

"No. How . . . how do I collect them?"

"Oh, that." The man, or the thing, whatever he was, reached into his jacket and pulled out a small, blue notebook. "They have to sign their names. One rule, though. They have to know why. You can't tell them they're signing a petition or anything like that. They have to know they're signing away their souls."

"What if they don't believe in souls?"

"Believe? What does belief have to do with anything? Just make sure they know."

Connor opened his mouth to ask another question but lost his train of thought.

When he opened his eyes, he realized that he'd passed out. The blood from his pinky had pooled out and congealed, staining his pants and shirt. Every inch of his body was sore from the beating he'd taken, and his head felt like someone put it in a vice.

The good news was that the bleeding had stopped.

But what a weird dream. Nine souls. "Shit. If only it were that easy." He snorted. Finding nine people who'd sign away their souls would be a hell of a lot easier than coming up with ten thousand dollars.

Too bad it had only been a dream.

Connor shook his head. Here he was, daydreaming about an easy fix when there was money to be made. He had to make it to that basketball game, after he sold some blood, and he had to be halfway presentable for both, which meant he'd have to stop by the YMCA. The utility company had shut off his water a week ago.

He glanced at the wall clock to see how much time he had, only to realize that he'd pawned the wall clock before his water had been cut.

***

Connor only managed to sell his plasma once that afternoon. Talking them into sticking a needle in his arm had been hard enough the first time. He'd had to call in his very last favor with an old friend to get a fake pinky and makeup to cover his pallid skin, and even then he was almost sent away.

The basketball game, on the other hand, had gone quite well. A bunch of drunk teenagers had stumbled into the betting and apparently had a little of their parent's money left over after beer. Not all of it went to Connor, but he got a big enough cut to make it worth his while.

By the end of the third quarter, the home team was down almost twenty points, and Connor had turned ten dollars into nearly two hundred.

"Son of a bitch." One of the boys wearing a letter jacket for the losing school swore. "These guys are our varsity team?"

"Well, they're not that bad," Connor consoled the boy, trying to figure out what the odds were he could get another twenty out of him. "They've always been a come-from-behind team. Look at the other team, sweating their balls off. All of their best players are dead on their feet. I bet this last quarter . . ."

"No!" The boy shook his head emphatically. "No more bets. I'm done."

Connor sighed in disappointment and started pushing the wad of folded money into his pocket. An unfamiliar shape stopped him, mid-motion. He pulled out the blue notebook.

His first reaction was to flinch. The dream, the strange man, or demon, or whatever he was supposed to be, couldn't have been real, and yet, here was the proof.

No, not proof. That was ridiculous, Connor reassured himself. He was a gambler. Connor was in the habit of carrying notepads, random slips of paper, a variety of things to jot done his latest bets or calculate payouts.

Subconsciously, he must've remembered that he had picked up the notebook somewhere, then incorporated that memory into his dream.

Still, it was an interesting idea, collecting souls. Connor glanced at the boy next to him, thinking. There was nothing to be gained from it. It was a dumb bet he couldn't afford to make. Still . . .

Connor cleared his throat. "How about a bet where you don't put any money on the table?"

"What?" The boy stared at him, suspiciously.

Connor grinned. "I'll bet fifty bucks, against your soul, that your team rallies and cuts the lead down by at least ten before the end of the game."

"My soul? What the hell does that mean?"

Connor shrugged. "Effectively? Nothing. If you win, I pay you fifty bucks, straight up. If I win, all you have to do is write your name down in this notebook."

Connor pulled a pen out of his pocket and scrawled, "Souls Collected" over the top of the first page.

"And?"

"And nothing." Connor stuck the pen back into his pocket.

"Hey, wait a second." One of the other drunk high schoolers scooted a little closer to Connor and his mark. "You're willing to put fifty bucks down, against nothing?"

"Not nothing," Connor countered. "Fifty bucks against your soul."

"Hell, I'm in!" The new mark chuckled.

"Hey! He was talking to me, first!" the old mark growled.

"Relax, boys." Connor laughed. "There's enough for both of you." He glanced at the wad of money, thoughtfully. "Only, don't tell anyone else, huh?"

***

Back at home, Connor tossed the notebook, with its two new names, onto his table, and sank into his chair, sorting through the wad of cash.

That last bet, the one for the souls, he knew he shouldn't have done that. He'd won, and it hadn't done anything for him. Well, nothing but the thrill. His heart still raced at the memory, having so much on the line . . . true, it was only a hundred dollars, he'd had much bigger bets than that, but it was a hundred dollars that he needed in order to keep from dying.

Speaking of which, it was time to find a poker game. His usual haunts wouldn't do. He owed too many people to show his face. He needed a new game with people who didn't know his face, and he knew just the pawnshop to stop in to find one of those.

Peeling off his sweat-stained shirt, Connor headed to the bedroom and grabbed an old button out of his mostly bare closet. After some consideration, Connor tore off the fake finger. Sometimes it paid to have people know just how desperate you were.

Connor folded his pile of cash into his wallet, intentionally putting twenties on the outside of a wad composed mostly of ones, and headed for the door. He paused before reaching it and headed back to the table to grab the notebook. After all, it was better to have it and not need it . . .

***

Hope Eternal and Diamond Bishop were neck and neck up to the last turn. If anything, Diamond Bishop gained a few inches from his inside position.

Then he stumbled. It wasn't much of a stumble, just a short hop, like he'd stepped on something hot or sharp, but in a horse race, that's all it takes.

Hope Eternal surged across the finish line, head and shoulders in front of Diamond Bishop.

Connor cursed and tossed his ticket on the ground in frustration. He'd had better days. To be fair, he'd had worse days, too. All told, he was only a thousand down from when he started, which put him at about three thousand total. Three thousand in six and a half days was a lot better than he'd done for a long time, but it wasn't where he needed to be.

Turning away from the monitor that provided a slow motion replay of the end of the race, the compulsive gambler scanned the board. He passed over a few familiar names that he'd once considered lucky. He stopped suddenly on an unfamiliar moniker.

"Soul Collector?"

"Oh, don't bother with that one," a man standing a few feet away advised. "The lineage is alright, but the racing gene must've skipped a generation."

Connor glanced over his shoulder. "Yeah. Thanks for the advice."

There was no way he was listening, though. The name was too perfect, too obvious. The dream the other day, it had been a sign! Connor looked down at the notebook he was still carrying. He only had two names in it, but that didn't matter. It had been about the race.

Connor headed to the front counter, dropping the notebook in the trash on his way, and peeling off the hundred dollar bills that made up the bulk of his earnings. "Twenty eight hundred dollars on Soul Collector."

A few seconds to document the transaction, and Connor walked away with a ticket clenched firmly in hand and a knowing smile on his face. At twenty to one, this single bet would give him the cash he needed to buy the most precious commodity in the world: time. He'd have months. Hell, the bastard might give him a year.

Connor tossed a couple bucks to a vendor for a bottle of beer and waited, breathless, for his race.

It didn't take long to start.

And it didn't take long for Connor to realize just how much of a mistake he'd made.

Soul Collector was at the back of the pack almost immediately and lost ground all the way to the end of the race.

Connor stared, bewildered at the screen, ticket still clenched in his hand.

Behind him a familiar voice whispered, "Told you so." Connor realized, with a start, that the voice was familiar, not only from a few moments before, but from a conversation he'd had days ago. A conversation he thought had only taken place inside his head.

Connor whirled around, but the speaker was nowhere to be seen.

"Son of a bitch." Connor pulled his remaining cash out of his wallet and flipped through it. Less than a hundred dollars. So much progress, gone, in the blink of an eye he'd gone from having a vague, vain chance, to hopelessness.

He took a deep drag from his beer; then he slipped it into his pocket, so he wouldn't get stopped by security, and headed towards the front door.

Halfway there, he stopped, a familiar blue shape catching his eye. Somehow his notebook was still at the top of the trashcan.

After a moment's hesitation, Connor grabbed it and headed out.

Less than a hundred dollars. It had taken him the better part of a week to earn thousands and less than a day to blow everything but a little pocket change.

He pulled the beer out of his pocket and took a deep swallow.

"Hey."

Connor glanced down. He'd almost walked by the man without noticing him. The bum was so dirty he almost blended in to the wall he was sitting against.

The older man pointed at the beer in Connor's hand, a look of desperation in his eye.

Connor snorted and started to turn away, then stopped. "You want this?"

The man nodded, licking his lips.

"How about a trade? This bottle," Connor held the beer forward with one hand as he pulled out the notebook with the other, "In exchange for your soul."

The vagrant grinned, toothlessly.

***

The walk from the bar to his apartment was in the range of five miles. Connor didn't waste the time, though. In the course of his walk, he stopped at three liquor stores, spent all but seven dollars of his remaining cash, collected five more signatures, and became so inebriated that he spent twenty minutes trying to unlock the wrong front door.

When he finally did find his way to his apartment and got in, he sobered up faster than he ever had before.

The man in the black suit was waiting for him. Sitting in his chair. Watching a television sitting on the kitchen counter.

"Well, well, I was beginning to wonder if you were going to make it back at all."

Connor opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.

"I hope you don't mind. I went ahead and made myself at home. Unfortunately your TV appears to be, um, shall we say, absent, so I brought my own. I just love watching the evening news." The man pointed at the screen.

Connor turned his attention to the television. It was muted, but on the screen he could see a young newswoman standing in front of a familiar-looking street corner. A car had crashed into the side of a building, and two paramedics were moving a body bag out of the wreckage and into the waiting ambulance.

It took a few seconds for Connor to realize that the corner he was looking at was where he had met one of the bums who had traded his soul to him for a half-empty bottle of booze.

A picture of one of the drunk high schoolers from the basketball game flashed up on the screen, and Connor felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.

"It's been a hell of a night, actually." The man in the suit grinned widely, displaying a row of pointed teeth. "One of that boy's friends decided to get drunk and beat up on the homeless. Beat a few of them to death. Then he went and set one of them on fire. How the fire spread to him, the police aren't quite sure."

"You . . . killed them?"

"Collecting immortal souls, you have no problem with, but you get squeamish when the meat sack they wear gets damaged? You humans are so odd."

"You KILLED them!"

"No, Connor." The man's voice was soft, but harsh. "You killed them. You picked them; you collected their names, their souls, their consent. You did."

"But . . . but I didn't even get enough. I only have eight."

"One shy, and two minutes to midnight." The man in black said, glancing down at his watch. "Oh dear, oh dear."

"I don't think Mr. Gruber . . ."

The man put up a finger and cocked his head.

Connor listened. Down the hall, he could hear footsteps, and voices. Familiar voices.

"Mr. Gruber is a very punctual man."

Connor swallowed. "There's no time."

"No time? Oh, contraire, there is only just time enough."

"What? To get Gruber's soul? I don't think he'll--"

"Not Gruber." The man growled. "Think about it. One soul to go, and of the two men in this room, only one," he pointed a long finger at Connor, "has a soul left to sell."

"Me?" Connor shook his head and backed away. "No, no, I don't want to go to hell."

"Do you really think you have a shot at heaven?" The man in black laughed. "In the past seven days, you've damned eight people. And that's just your most immediate sins. Tell me, do you even remember the last thing you did that wasn't worthy of damnation? Oh, you're hellbound, my boy, no question about it. The only thing that signing that notebook does, is grant me a little finder's fee. Oh, and it spares you whatever punishment Gruber has in store for you."

Connor whimpered. He could hear the footsteps of two very large men -- and one very powerful man -- coming ever closer.

"Promise you won't take me right away."

The man in black shrugged. "I never intended to."

Connor pulled the notebook out, opened it, and scrawled his name just under the illegible one he'd been given by a Vietnam veteran with no legs and a terrible twitch.

As he finished signing, the door swung open, and a very sweaty Mr. Gruber entered, talking quickly and nervously as he did.

"I know, I know, you don't have enough money, but I have a deal for you, all you have to do is sign away your soul, and I . . . ." The loan shark stopped in his tracks, eyes fixed on the blue notebook in Connor's hand.

His gaze shifted, past Connor, to the man in black. "But . . . no. He was mine. I had him; he was mine and I . . . no, please, I only need one more!"

The man in black shook his head slowly. "Ah, Gruber, so close. So very, very close. But close doesn't seal the deal, I'm afraid. Now, unless my watch is wrong, and my watch is never, ever wrong, your year comes to an end in ten . . . nine . . . eight. . ."

"Please! There has to be something I can do for you, something I can give you. There has to be!"

"Three . . . Two . . . One." The man in black nodded at one of the giants, then turned his back to watch Connor's face as the two thugs leaned in, opening their broad mouths to reveal rows of jagged, sharpened teeth, which dug deep into the flesh of Mr. Gruber.

The man in black waited for the screaming to subside. "Now then. I believe there is the matter of your soul."

Connor's face went white.

"As promised, I am not going to collect your soul just yet. I'm going to wait for, oh, let's say, one year. Well, a few seconds shy of one year. I'm big on the whole 'midnight' thing. So, here it is: you have until one year from now, midnight, to fill that little notebook up with souls. One soul per line, for a total of, if I'm not mistaken, and I never am, one thousand, eight hundred and fifty two souls. I know, I know. The notebook doesn't look that big. Well, it is. If you fill it, completely fill it, I'll give you your own soul back. But, if you don't, if you're even one shy, I get every soul in there, and I keep yours."

"But . . . but I can't . . ."

"Can't never could, my boy. Can't never could. Just think of it as a bet. The biggest bet you've ever made."

***

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### Last Day on Earth

Erin had to admit, the man across the table from her didn't look dangerous. Of course, a great many people said exactly the same thing about a great many sociopaths and psychopaths, only to be proven wrong. But Erin had met a lot of killers in her life, hundreds, if not thousands, in fact, and this man did not strike her as violent in the least.

The night before, looking over the court case that had put him in prison, she'd thought that the evidence seemed a bit circumstantial, and now, having met him, her doubts became even more pronounced.

Terrence Quail, as he identified himself, or John Doe, as the courts had dubbed him, stared through Erin, his eyes seeming to examine an invisible landscape as he tapped arrhythmically on the table in front of him, as though pounding equations into a calculator. If she didn't know who he was, Erin would have assumed him to be a professor, or some eccentric. He was, of course, insane. If the fantastic history he'd given was not sufficient proof of his madness, then his behavior during the trial made up the difference. Instead of mounting any kind of defense, he'd spent his time querying the judge about the legal system and taking extensive notes on the clothing and speech patterns of everyone who appeared.

Terrence's eyes flickered suddenly and focused on Erin. "I'm sorry, what were we talking about?"

"I was explaining about my book," she pressed, gently.

"Oh. Yes. The last words thing. I remember."

"So, did you have anything you wanted to say?"

Terrence blinked. "About what?"

"Well, some of the men I talked with apologized to their victims. Others reasserted their innocence."

"I am innocent," Terrence replied with a shrug, "but that isn't something I feel the need to belabor. It's not like telling you will change anything."

"True."

Terrence thought for a moment, "I suppose, if there is anything I'd like to say before I go, it's that your legal system is awful. Just awful. I mean, the entire system, top to bottom and all the way across is such a mess."

"You're referring to your trial?"

"That is a prime example, but from what I've been able to learn, the whole thing is just ridiculous."

"There are some people who might argue that you're as much to blame as anyone," Erin answered. "After all, you didn't put up much of a fight."

"And I take issue with the assumption that I should have," the small man argued. "In a simpler legal system, one might make the argument that having two parties argue over the facts in front of an impartial jury makes sense, but in a legal system as impossibly complex as yours, where evidence can be disallowed and where the opinions of experts can be bought and paid for, you cannot ever assume that the two sides will be operating on equal ground. You have a system where, essentially, the search for truth is laid at the feet of the people who have the least knowledge of obfuscation and politics, and have put two ambitious and greedy men to arguing over details and trying to use passion where their logic is weak."

Erin nodded, pushing her recorder a little closer to her interviewee. For a crazy man, he came across with surprising coherence.

"But it isn't even the courtroom that is the most broken," Terrence went on. "Never mind the police, who used lies and overt intimidation in an attempt to extract a confession from me. The jail system is, by far, the most unreasonable arrangement I've ever seen. One would think that some effort would be put into rehabilitation, if only for those who are expected to one day rejoin society, instead criminals of all personality types are lumped together and treated like animals. They spend years in a sub-sect of society where antisocial behavior is rewarded. This place creates and trains criminals."

"What would you change, if you could?"

Terrence considered the question for a moment. "I can't really answer that question. I have a hard time imagining any changes that wouldn't make things better."

"I see." Erin glanced at the clock on the wall. They were running low on time, and Terrence looked like he was about to fade back into his own private world. "How has prison been for you?"

"Boring, mostly. I've been able to observe quite a bit, but my direct interactions with other inmates, or even guards, have been rather limited."

"You seem to have developed an interest in body art in your time here." She pointed at his bare arms as she spoke. His tattooing was unique, quite different than most prison art, consisting primarily of artistically drawn equations and what looked to be graphs.

Terrence made a face. "A necessary evil. I started out doing my work on paper, but one of the guards seemed to take offense, something about me thinking I was smarter than him. He took to tossing my cell and confiscating everything with writing on it."

"And the scars?" Erin pointed at the dense lines of flesh that traveled up the convict's neck and over the top of his head, then down to the lines running down his arms, all the way to his fingers. "Are those your first attempts at tattooing yourself?"

Terrence didn't answer for several seconds. "They are related to the tattoos."

Obviously he didn't want to talk about it. Erin decided not to press the issue. She paused, trying to figure out how to ask the next question. "Have you been visiting any other worlds during your stay?"

Terrence raised an eyebrow at her. "How would I do that?"

"I've read the police reports on you. They say you claimed to have come from another world. That you travel between worlds."

"Yes, but I've been in prison for the past three years. How exactly am I supposed to build and power a world-jumping device in my cell?"

"I'm sorry. I didn't realize you needed to build a device. The police didn't mention finding any devices at your campsite."

"I'd only arrived a few days before. I hadn't started building one yet."

"Why didn't you bring it with you when you came here?"

Terrence shook his head. "It doesn't work that way. A world gate is like a gun, firing its contents through the fabric of reality. You could, of course, load a world gate inside of another world gate with you, so you didn't have to make one when you jumped, but I didn't have the foresight to do that when I came into your world."

"I see." Erin nodded, her eyes locked on his, hoping to draw more out of him with her curiosity.

"This isn't the first time that I've suffered for that oversight," Terrence reflected, leaning back in his seat. "Once I wound up on an undeveloped world. Metal was scarce, highly prized, and a pain to work with. I ended up using water as my conductive device, and charged it with a bolt of lightning. Took me forever."

"I bet."

Terrence shook his head. "Doubtful. People never believe me."

Erin considered arguing the point, but didn't feel comfortable lying to him. For all his quirks, he seemed unusually perceptive.

Instead she moved on with her questions. "Did you ever expect your travels to end this way?"

"What way?"

Erin stared at him for a moment. "With you dying. Being executed, I mean."

"Oh, right, that. Believe it or not, the thought did cross my mind. I've contemplated the possibility of being destroyed by gravity or the vacuum of space, being eaten by unspeakable monsters or consumed by aggressive microorganisms, drowning, dying from exposure, drawn and quartered, killed in a duel, shot in a battle, vaporized, buried alive. To name a few."

"All of those?"

"Absolutely. Of course, my biggest concern has always been the microorganisms. I came up with some protective measures, but the thing about bacteria and viruses, they can be quite creative."

Erin nodded. "Interesting. Tell me, do you miss your home?"

"From time to time. I'd been through about eight worlds over the course of seven and a half years before I came here. This was supposed to be my last stop before I went home."

"Instead it's your very last trip," Erin lowered her voice and pushed as much sympathy as she could into her tone.

Terrence thought for a moment. "It certainly looks that way."

Behind her, Erin heard the guard unlocking the door to the interview room. She reached for her recorder and tried to think of some meaningful last question to ask.

All she could come up with was, "Is there anything you want me to do for you?"

Terrence thought for a moment before responding. "Are you coming to the execution?"

"I'd planned to."

"Wear sunglasses."

Erin stared at him blankly as he was shackled and led away.

***

Before being taken to the viewing room, Erin got in a few more interviews, two with guards. One of them considered Terrence a genius who had probably been set up, while the other thought Terrence was a know-it-all who probably did a lot of terrible things in his life and deserved worse than he would get. She also spoke to one of the protestors outside the gate, an elderly woman who bemoaned the fact that after years of protests and petitions, the state hadn't simply kept killing people, but had sped up the process.

Inside the viewing room, Erin saw a dozen or so people that she hoped to talk to later, but she'd learned very quickly that trying to get someone to talk on record in the moments before an execution was a fast way to get on a lot of peoples' bad sides.

Instead she sat silently, keeping all expression off her face, for fear of offending anyone who might be up for a conversation afterwards.

She waited until they darkened the viewing room and revealed the room where Terrence would be executed to put on her sunglasses. It made it a lot harder for her to see what was going on, but it had been, quite literally, his last request, and as much as she'd become jaded in the course of this project, she couldn't bring herself to deny him something so small as this.

Having attended several executions before this one, Erin was well acquainted with the routine, but she watched carefully anyway. Much of her book would be quotations, the main place that she'd be able to sneak her own voice in would be in observations like these, and the smallest moment just before a man died could be the most poignant.

As the guard pressed the wet sponge against Terrence's head, Erin noticed, for the first time, that the scarring on top of his head was a bit denser than the scars that ran across the rest of his body.

The guard spoke softly to Terrence, undoubtedly telling him that this was his last chance to say anything he had to say.

Erin leaned forward. While her interviews would constitute the majority of her book, it was pivotal moments, like this, around which her work centered.

Terrence nodded, his expression surprisingly relaxed as he looked out over the people who had come to watch him die.

"Good bye."

And that was it.

Erin grimaced, it wasn't bad, in terms of what she wanted for her book, but she didn't think it would the feature, or the title.

A few more moments of preparation passed, and then all eyes moved to the clock. Why it was that a man sentenced to die needed to die so precisely, she couldn't begin to guess.

The minutes ticked by.

Erin's eyes moved back to Terrence. She'd been interested primarily in his tattoos when she saw him, but seeing him with his arms strapped down and his head held in place, she couldn't help but focus on his scars. They were surprisingly precise. She hadn't realized it when he could move about, but now they looked as though they had been measured out by someone who knew what they were doing.

The odd thing about them was how dense they were, like someone hadn't simply cut into the skin but had irritated the cut somehow.

The mood of the room shifted, and Erin turned her attention back to the clock.

They were down to the last seconds.

What had he said in the interview? He wanted to build a world gate, but he needed the materials and the energy to power it. Three years might have gotten him the materials, but what could possibly power something that required energy in the neighborhood of a lightning bolt?

Erin's mouth went dry and her entire body rigid.

The second hand hit the twelve, and three men simultaneously hit three buttons, only one of which triggered the completion of a circuit.

Erin knew what to expect. She'd seen it before, men spasming as electricity coursed through their bodies.

Instead what she saw was a white light. For almost a second the entire room filled with light, and then it was gone.

Everyone else in the room still covered their eyes, blinded by the flash. Erin's sunglasses had given her enough protection to recover before anyone else.

She ripped the glasses off and leaned forward.

Terrence was gone. In his place she saw his prison garments, smoldering from contact with the thin wires that sat in the chair, forming, for a moment suspended in time, the vague outline of a man. The wires lay exactly where Terrence's scars had sat.

As Erin stared the clothes moved from smoldering to fully on fire, and the wire collapsed under the weight of the burning cloth.

***

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### About the author

Ross Willard, a Colorado resident, started writing stories right about the time he learned to form words. Earlier than that, if you believe his claims that he developed an advanced form of hieroglyphs using the contents of his diaper. When not writing, Ross practices thumb-twiddling at a black belt level and is nearing fluency in his second language, Gibberish. His first published book, _System Purge_ , is currently available both on Smashwords and Amazon, and it is selling well despite the complete lack of evidence to support the claim that the secret location of the Ark of the Covenant is encoded within it. A longtime member of the Penpointers critique group, Ross can often be found procrastinating at his local independent coffee house, or working on his website, www.rosswriter.com.

### Connect with me Online:

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/rdwillard

My website: http://www.rosswriter.com

