Fear the Abyss: 22 Terrifying Tales of Cosmic Horror (8 page)

Frank looked at the radio and cocked his head to one side.

"You hate your own daughter?" He asked. "Candy, that’s
your daughter
!"

"
She was an accident
!" Candace nearly screamed and Frank heard, for the first time, the faint sound of a baby. But he also heard something else, in the back of his head.

She really doesn’t love you anymore and probably hasn’t for a very long time.

Then another thought.

She killed herself and an unborn baby to get away from
you
.

"You really hated me. Didn’t you?"

"
Yes
!" She screamed. "
I fucking did and I’m sorry, but I did. For a long time I did. Now, I just want to move on
."

"Why didn’t you just go to your mother’s in Ohio?"

"
Just dump my ashes, Frank. Can you just do that one fucking thing for me please
?"

"Candace, I want to know--" Frank started, but Candace, dead or not, still interrupted him.

"
No, we are not picking up from our last fight
!" Candace said. "
Can you just let it go? For the love of God, can’t you just let it go
?"

Frank, heartbroken, said nothing.

"
You’re pathetic! I figured you’d at least get a little satisfaction out of dumping my ashes into the god damn sea, but you just want to talk and argue. I wanted you to be a man! You never fought back no matter what I threw at you. Do you see why I
--"

He got up and turned off the radio. He grabbed the cord and yanked it out of the wall. He threw the radio hard on the stateroom floor. He picked up the box of ashes, stormed across the room and put it roughly in the suitcase, then put the suitcase in the little closet.

He walked over to the bed and kicked his shoes off. He felt awfully tired and figured he’d try to go to sleep. Tomorrow or the next day (
he couldn’t honestly remember
), he’d be in the Caribbean. Frank fell onto the bed, still in his clothes and fell fast asleep.

In the early afternoon two days later, Frank walked off the ship--the
SS Celeste
from Happytime Cruise Lines--in a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, some flip flops and a back pack. The air was warm and smelled like sunscreen and tourists. The sky was a deep blue and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. He put on his sunglasses and looked for the nearest beach.

He found a bar, instead.

After about an hour, he’d managed to have three Pina Coladas. He was directed by a young islander to a small beach about a mile away from the bar. Somewhere where there weren’t a lot of people was what he’d wanted and after about 45 minutes of walking, he saw the beach the young man had told him about.

It was perfect.

He walked on the sand about half way to the shore line and took his back pack off. He opened it up and pulled out a very small blue kid’s shovel.

Then he pulled out Candace’s box of ashes and dropped the back pack.

He dropped to his knees and began to dig a hole. Not a very deep hole, but one just deep enough.

Frank had been tempted to bring a small portable radio so he could hear Candy scream and yell, but he’d decided he’d had enough. He picked up the box and rested it in the hole--it was about two feet deep.

"Bye, Candy," was all he said and covered up the hole. Somewhere in his head, he could almost hear her yelling at him.

He stood up and looked at the small grave. Bending down to grab his bag, Frank stuffed the small blue shovel inside. He turned and walked away. Maybe he’d go back to the bar. The drinks were great and inexpensive.

He thought about Candace one more time and hoped that someone with a radio didn’t lay their blanket anywhere near the box.

He smiled.

Matt Moore

Matt Moore is an Aurora Award nominee with short fiction in several print, electronic and audio markets such as
On Spec, AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review, Torn Realities, Cast Macabre
and the
Tesseracts
anthologies. His novelette
Silverman's Game
was published in 2010. When not writing, he is the Communications Director for ChiZine Publications. He can be reached at mattmoorewrites.com.

When Fynn stepped out of the shadow
s
, duffel bag in hand and surgical apron over her fatigues, Teller's junkie heart quickened. And he hated himself for it—mouth going dry, craving the graceful oblivion she'd deliver.

Teller yanked the gurney to a halt, wheels groaning. Watching up and down the dimly lit basement hallways, he pressed his thumb against the door's scanner, trying to hide the shakes.

"Relax," Fynn commanded. "There's nothing wrong here."

"Right," he replied, craving the bitter taste on his tongue. Hoping anyone who saw them would believe a surgeon had a reason to accompany a corpsman disposing of limbs removed during surgery.

The scanner beeped. The door popped open, releasing the dry, sterile smell into the dank hallway. Teller wheeled in the gurney, piled high with black medical waste bags headed for the incinerator. Not that it was a true incinerator. The name had stuck, but this nasty piece of technology used microwaves to reduce almost anything to ash in moments. If the military could shrink it to something they could mount on exoarmor, the war would be over.

Fynn followed him in and pulled the door shut. The room, empty except for the chute to the incinerator, its controls, and a buzzing overhead light, was barely big enough for the two of them and the gurney. While Fynn snapped on gloves, Teller keyed in the ignition sequence and kept his eyes fixed on the pad.

Didn't mean he didn't hear it. Smell it.

The first time she'd done this, he'd almost passed out. He saw his share of shit working in a forward field hospital, which had started him on the pills, but it was the care she showed that freaked him out. The delicateness, almost love, sorting through the bags, unzipping them, gently examining the limbs that had been cut from soldiers only hours earlier.

"You're jonesing," Fynn said.

Teller hadn't known he'd been shifting from foot to foot, his fingers twitching. "Not too bad. Been eight hours," he lied, adding two hours since he'd last popped a pill.

"Good," she said. Plastic crinkled against the duffel's heavy fiber as she slid a bag in.

What did she do with them? Teller asked himself for the thousandth time. Research, she'd told him once after fucking. He hadn't been paying attention. Hadn't even asked. Something about an abandoned program to keep severed limbs viable. Surgeons could focus on the critical procedures and re-attached amputated limbs hours, even days, later. Need to keep it quiet, she'd said. I don't want the military to know because I want to save lives. They'd use it as a weapon. She'd then sprung out of her cot, naked, sat at the small desk in her quarters and typed into her tablet.

"We're done," Fynn said, wiping bloody gloves on her apron before snapping them off. The room reeked of coppery, congealed blood. She reached into her fatigues pocket and handed him a plastic bottle.

Not wanting to, hating himself, he shook it. Not as full as usual.

"If you can go eight hours," Fynn said, "try for ten. That will last you four days." She hoisted the duffel onto a shoulder and ran a finger down his cheek. "Come by when you're done." She turned and left.

Teller cursed, hands quivering now. When she wanted sex, she wanted him clean. Not that he didn't enjoy it. She wasn't much to look at, but military service gave her a firm body. She didn't even make him wear a condom. I'm a doctor, she'd said, I'll cure anything you have. And getting knocked up? All she'd said was Uncle Marty took care of that when I was 13.

At least after sex she opened up, talked about herself. Like it was pillow talk. Like they were a couple. He hoped she'd let slide some sliver of knowledge he could leverage against her. An officer, a surgeon and his source—she held the cards. Hell, she was in her mid-thirties and he'd just turned 22.

Now she was cutting him back. To help wean him off the pills, he knew. To get clean.

But his junkie heart and junkie brain had control. He needed to know something about her. Even things out. Her taking body parts would be his word against hers if he didn't know what she did with them. Where she took them.

Leaving the gurney, he went into the hall in time to hear the stairway door slam shut. He followed, sprinting up the metal steps, and paused at the main level. Doors led outside and into the hospital hall. Checking outside, he spotted her crossing the gravel road between the main building and a row of DRASH tents. He waited for her to move between tents before crossing the road himself, waiting in the shadows of the next tent over. Beyond the row of tents, flood lights from the main building barely illuminated the few large supply tents and pre-fab sheds in the no-man's land between the main compound and the perimeter fence. Beyond the fence, its outward facing lights showed the brown, hard scrabble countryside. And beyond its illumination, the enemy.

Teller spotted Fynn in the no-man's land. She stopped at the side of a large shed with two roll up doors on its front. Teller had assumed it was part of the motor pool. Fynn undid a lock on a side door and went it.

He'd check it out later. Right now he was jonesing too bad. He moved back to the main building, hoping no one had found the gurney unattended.

*****

By the time he reached his tent, the world had gone deliciously waffling-baffling, topsy-turvy-curvy.

Sex with Fynn had been fine.

Pills were better.

His sleeping tent mates appeared as distorted beasts, their snoring an alien rumbling from reality's deepest depths. Bliss enwrapped him like a soft shroud, leeching away his self-hatred.

And when, some slippery-time later, the world rolled and shivered, he thought it just part of the high. But motion surrounded him, tugged at him. The high's clutches slipped down his skin like warm, slick tentacles. Mind sharper, animal panic stabbed his heart before his brain assembled the flurry of movements and sounds of his tent mates into a cohesive thought: incoming artillery. A concussive blast thudded. Instinct and training had him up, pants on, helmet on, running for the bunker.

Through the tent flaps, visions slapped him—red and orange flames, brown sand, black smoke, blacker sky. Acrid smell of burning tents and spent artillery shells. He flowed among the swarm of people toward the main building's wide, blank north wall. The hard packed ground shifting and rolling beneath him. Bodies pressed close, the stink of sweat and panic. Down the ramp, through the open steel doors, into the bunker's concrete depths. He turned into the room for medical staff. Finding a spot on the hard, cold floor he leaned against a wall that vibrated with each landing shell and every volley fired back.

By now, drones would be up, scanning, relaying enemy artillery locations to their own cannons.

War by proxy, Fynn had called it. For centuries, man fought face-to-face. One man kills another. Now exoarmor hides our faces. But the armor loses a leg, the person loses a leg. We should send machines to kill machines. Or send the soldier home and let the leg keep fighting.

Teller glanced around the room, a flickering overhead lights casting everyone in shadow. Some stood, most sat. A captain did a head count, a corporal in tow. Teller spotted Fynn, hunched over, typing at her tablet. He didn't let his eyes linger. That typing. In the mess hall, the break room, at the infirmary, after fucking.

Letters? Reports? She'd been a researcher in Vancouver before she'd been drafted. She told him how lonely she'd been, how much she'd sacrificed for her career. How she wanted to save life, maintain it, create it. She wanted to have children and it pained her that she never would.

Maybe she was writing about him. The research talk was bullshit. She'd decided to record his junkie life after catching him smuggling pills. He'd been bribing Sallen, an MP whose thumbprint could open any door on the base, for access to the dispensary. Teller had been caught before, but most of the docs had been as fucked up as him by this place. He had connections to feed their secret needs or kinks. A balance. Keep each others' secrets. Colonel Brice didn't have to know anything.

But Fynn had offered to help him get clean. She'd give him pills, but control the dosage and amount. She just wanted to look at whatever he put in the incinerator. Maybe take a few limbs.

What kind of surgeon did that?

Maybe the tablet had the answers.

*****

The infirmary hallways bowed down and up and around, a bubble of right angles.

Still feeling the pills.

Sallen, bought off with some kinky Korean porn, unlocked Fynn's office. With her in surgery, he had no better time. Teller stepped in, the room big enough for a desk, chair and filing cabinet, and Sallen locked the door behind him. The turning tumblers sounded monstrously huge.

Sorting through several tablets scattered on her desk, he found the one she typed on. The one without military markings on its case. He also knew her password from watching her enter it. "Herbert".

Her documents folder held dozens of files, but between the pills and the medical jargon he couldn't make heads or tails of them. The message center was surprisingly empty. He'd thought she'd have friends back home writing her. He opened her sent messages and found it full of messages. Over twenty per day. Mind too affected to do anything but scan and absorb words:

...might not read this... I'm sorry... I can save them... Please write back... new life, like (finally) my own children... I've heard you have a little girl now... let me know you read this... I know you'll make a great Dad... viability of limbs... to feel needed, desired... shelling last night... I know I put my needs before yours... not crazy to want to maintain life...

Some messages had attachments. He opened them, fingers moving fast, swiping through images. The desert, the base, damaged building. Others showed severed limbs, limbs sewn to other limbs with fine silver wire, amalgams of limbs attached to some kind of machine. Then a video—body parts, silver wire spilling from the wounds, twitched and moved. Fingers gripped, ankles and knees flexed as if running. An eyeball perched on the back of a hand pivoted, following a point of light, looking into the camera—

He dropped the tablet. Its clatter, bass-deep from the drugs, made him jump. Had he really just seen—

"What are you doing here?"

Teller turned. Fynn in bloody scrubs, stepping into her office. The door shutting, Teller caught a glimpse of black MP's fatigues in the hall. Sallen. She'd probably paid him off to let her know if anyone tried to get into her office.

"Answer me," she commanded.

Caught. Caught and no way out. Junkie logic gave him two choices: bob and weave, or go straight through. He reached for the tablet to show her the images. But as he reached, his hand looked huge.

High. So fucking high.

Fynn pushed past him and grabbed the tablet. "My messages? You've been reading my fucking message?!" She swiped through some screens. "This is private! Just because we're fucking doesn't mean you get to know everything about me. Yes, I've screwed up relationships. And I'm consulting people about my work. Sometimes they're the same men. Happy now?"

"I'm high, okay?" Teller blurted. "I don't know what I was thinking." Bobbing and weaving. "I couldn't even read the words, you know?" Play to her sympathies. "I was looking for pills. Really? You want to know? I was looking for how I could get more pills."

Something in her posture shifted. Just slightly. Just enough to let him know he'd reached her.

"You've finished the ones I gave you. You didn't trust me to help you."

A statement. Not a question. "I—," he began and let it hang there. Truth was, he still had three pills left. He drew strength from that realization. Two months ago, before he met her, he'd have been through the pills in two days. Now he'd lasted four days and had a few pills left over.

"You don't need my help, it seems."

"I do," he said too quickly, hating the desperation.

"Do what I tell you. Make them last."

"Okay," he replied, hating the word, its shape. The humiliation.

Twelve years old again, his mother telling him how to dress, what summer school courses to take, what friends he could and couldn't play with. He hated it, hated her. And his dad in the den, watching TV, letting her run both their lives.

The drugs hadn't even been to rebel. Just to deaden his anger. He hadn't noticed how pissed his mother had been until she threatened to kick him out. He had one chance: Join the military, like his father and both grandfathers. Do that, and he could have money for college when his tour ended.

Or he could leave and never come back.

At least joining up saved him from the infantry like the draftees. Grunts locked inside exoarmor sent up against old-style tanks and rockets. But even though he didn't see combat, he saw its results. Transport drones dropping off screaming men and women, charred bits of their exoarmor sliced into their skin and muscle, limbs hanging by bits of tendon. Wheeling in casualties, wheeling out parts.