The corridor cleared, I turn back to the barricade. “This isn’t helping,” I call. “We should be repairing the—”
A horrid giggle triggers my piloerectile reflex, making the chromatophores in the small of my back spike up. “Meaty. Spirited. Clean-thinking.”
The voice comes from behind the barricade (which has fallen silent, eyes clouded). “Jordan? Is that you?”
“Mm, it’s Lilith Longshanks! Bet there’s lots of eating on those plump buttocks of hers, what do you say, my pretties?”
An appreciative titter follows. I shudder, trying to work out if there’s another route through to the reactor control room. I try again. “You’ve got to let me through, Jordan. I know where there’s a huge supply of well-shielded feedstock we can parcel out. Enough to get everyone thinking clearly again. Let me through and . . . ” I trail off. There
is
another route, but it’s outside the hull. It’s your domain, really, but if I install one of your two soul chips, gain access to your memories, I can figure it out.
“I don’t think so, little buffet.” The charnel hedge shudders as something forces itself against it from the other side. Something
big.
If Jordan has been eating, trying desperately to extract uncontaminated isotopes, what has he done with the surplus? Where has he sequestrated it? What has he made with it? In my mind’s eye I can see him, a cancer of mindlessly expanding, reproducing mechanocytes governed by a mind spun half out of control, lurking in a nest of undigestible leftovers as he waits for food—
I look at the bulging wall of bones, and my nerve fails: I cut the Teflon shield free, cover my face, and launch myself as fast as I can through the floating charred bodies that fill the corridor, desperate to escape.
Which brings us to the present, Lamashtu, sister-mine.
I’ve got your soul—half of it—loaded in the back of my head. I’ve been dreaming of you, dreaming
within
you, for days now.
In an hour’s time I am going to take my toolkit and go outside, onto the hull of the
Lansford Hastings,
under the slowly moving stars.
I’m going to go into your maze and follow the trail of pipes and coolant ducts home to the Number Six reactor, and I’m going to force my way into the reactor containment firewall and through the neutron shield. And I’m going to strip away every piece of heavily shielded metal I can get my hands on, and carry it back to you. When you’re better, when you’re back to yourself and more than a hungry bag of rawhead reflexes, you can join me. It’ll go faster then. We can help the others—
I’m running out of wall to scribble on; anyway, this is taking too long and besides, I’m feeling a little hungry myself.
Goodbye, sister. Sleep tight. Don’t let any strangers in.
Joanne Anderton
lives in Sydney with her husband and too many pets. By day she is a mild-mannered marketing coordinator for an Australian book distributor; by night she writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Her short story collection,
The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories,
won the Aurealis Award for Best Collection, and the Australian Shadows Award for Best Collected Work. She has published The Veiled Worlds Trilogy:
Debris, Suited,
and
Guardian.
She has been shortlisted for multiple Aurealis and Ditmar awards, and won the 2012 Ditmar for Best New Talent. You can find her online at joanneanderton.com.
Michael A. Arnzen
’s latest experiments in horror include a treasury of micropoetry (
The Gorelets Omnibus
), a set of horror-oriented refrigerator magnets (
The Fridge of the Damned
), and a web app for writers on the dark side (diaboliquestrategies.com). He is the recipient of four Bram Stoker Awards for his fiction, and is currently serving as Division Chair of Humanities at Seton Hill University, home of the MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction. Visit him at gorelets.com.
Marie Brennan
is the author of nine novels, including the series Memoirs of Lady Trent:
A Natural History of Dragons,
The Tropic of Serpents,
and the upcoming
Voyage of the Basilisk,
as well as more than forty short stories. More information can be found at swantower.com.
Mike Carey
is the author of the Felix Castor novels,
The Girl With All the Gifts,
and (along with Linda and Louise Carey)
The Steel Seraglio.
He has also written extensively for comics publishers DC and Marvel, including long runs on X-Men, Hellblazer, and Ultimate Fantastic Four. He wrote the comic book Lucifer for its entire run and is the co-creator and writer of the ongoing Vertigo series The Unwritten.
Jacques L. Condor
(Maka Tai Meh, his given First Nations tribal name) is a French-Canadian Native American of the Abenaki-Mesquaki tribes. He has lived in major cities, small towns, and bush villages in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest for fifty-plus years. He taught at schools, colleges, museums, and on reserves about the culture, history, and arts of his tribes for twenty years as part of the federal government’s Indian education programs. Now eighty-five, Condor writes short stories and novellas based on the legends and tales of both Natives and the “oldtime” sourdoughs and pioneers. He has published five books on Alaska. Recently, his work appeared in five anthologies:
Icefloes,
Northwest Passages,
A Cascadian Odyssey,
Queer Dimensions,
Queer Gothic Tales,
and
Dead North.
Neil Gaiman
is the #1
New York Times
bestselling author of more than twenty books for readers of all ages, including the novels
Neverwhere,
Stardust,
American Gods,
Anansi Boys,
Coraline,
and
The Graveyard Book
; the Sandman series of graphic novels; and
Make Good Art,
the text of a commencement speech he delivered at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts. His most recent book for younger readers is
Fortunately, the Milk.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane,
his most recent novel for adults, was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards. He is the recipient of numerous literary honors, including the Locus and Hugo Awards and the Newbery and Carnegie Medals.
Roxane Gay
’s writing has appeared in
Best American Short Stories 2012,
Best Sex Writing 2012,
Oxford American,
American Short Fiction,
West Branch,
Virginia Quarterly Review,
NOON,
The New York Times Book Review,
Bookforum,
Time,
The Los Angeles Times,
The Nation,
The Rumpus,
Salon,
The Wall Street Journal
’s Speakeasy culture blog, and many others. She is the co-editor of
PANK
and essays editor for
The Rumpus.
She teaches writing at Eastern Illinois University. Her novel,
An Untamed State,
was recently published (Grove Atlantic) as was her essay collection,
Bad Feminist
(Harper Perennial).
Ron Goulart
has been a professional author for several decades and has over one hundred-eighty books to his credit, including more than fifty science fiction novels and twenty-some mystery novels. He is considered a leading authority on comic books, comic strips, and pulp fiction—subjects about which he has written extensively. Goulart’s
After Things Fell Apart
(1970) is the only science-fiction novel to ever win an Edgar Award.
Eric Gregory
lives in Carrboro, North Carolina. His stories have appeared in
Lightspeed,
Strange Horizons,
Interzone,
Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic Science Fiction,
and elsewhere. Find him online at ericmg.comor and on Twitter at @ericgregory.
William Jablonsky
’s first collection of short fiction,
The Indestructible Man: Stories,
was published by Livingston Press in April 2005. His second book, the novel
The Clockwork Man,
was released by Medallion Press in September 2010, and republished by Grey Oak (India) in the summer of 2012. His short stories have appeared in many literary journals and magazines, including
Asimov’s,
Shimmer,
Phoebe,
and
The Florida Review.
He teaches at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa.
Shaun Jeffrey
was brought up in a house in a cemetery, so it was only natural for his prose to stray towards the dark side when he started writing. Among his writing credits are stories published in
Surreal Magazine,
Dark Discoveries,
Shadowed Realms,
and
Cemetery Dance.
He has had two collections published,
The Mutilation Machination
and
Voyeurs of Death,
as well as five novels:
The Kult,
Killers,
Deadfall,
Fangtooth,
and
Evilution.
The Kult
has been filmed by Gharial Productions. When not spending time with his family or writing, he works out at the gym, jogs, does Krav Maga, and is a Taekwondo black belt.
Matthew Johnson
lives with his wife and two sons in Ottawa, where he works as Director of Education for MediaSmarts, Canada’s center for digital and media literacy.
Irregular Verbs and Other Storie
s, a collection of his short fiction, was published in 2014 by ChiZine Publications. You can follow his work at irregularverbs.ca or on Twitter at @irregularverbal.
Stephen Graham Jones
is the author of twenty novels, five story collections, and over two hundred short stories. His most recent novels are
Not for Nothing
and
The Gospel of Z
; his latest collections are:
After the People Lights Have Gone Off
and
Zombie Sharks With Metal Teeth.
Jones has been a Stoker finalist, a Shirley Jackson Award finalist, an NEA fellow, and won the Texas Institute of Letters Award for fiction. He teaches in the MFA program at CU Boulder and UCR-Palm Desert.
Joy Kennedy-O’Neill
teaches English at Brazosport College on the Texas coast. Her works have appeared in
Strange Horizons,
The New Orleans Review,
and anthologies such as
What Wildness is This: Women Write the Southwest.
The
New York Time
s recently hailed
Caitlín R. Kiernan
as “one of our essential writers of dark fiction.” Her novels include
The Red Tree
(nominated for the Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy awards) and
The Drowning Girl: A Memoir
(winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award and the Bram Stoker Award, nominated for the Nebula, Locus, Jackson, World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Mythopoeic awards). To date, her short fiction has been collected in thirteen volumes, most recently
Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume One),
and
The Ape’s Wife and Other Stories.
A fourteenth,
Beneath An Oil-Dark Sea: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume Two)
is forthcoming. Currently, she’s writing the graphic novel series Alabaster for Dark Horse Comics and has just finished her next novel,
Cherry Bomb.
Nicole Kornher-Stace
lives in New Paltz, NY. Her short fiction and poetry has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, including
Best American Fantasy, Clockwork Phoenix 3
and
4,
The Mammoth Book of Steampunk,
Apex,
and
Fantasy Magazine.
She is the author of
Desideria,
Demon Lovers and Other Difficulties,
and
The Winter Triptych.
Her latest novel,
Archivist Wasp,
is forthcoming from Big Mouth House, Small Beer Press’s YA imprint, in late 2014. She can be found online at nicolekornherstace.com.
Joe R. Lansdale
is the author of over forty novels and numerous short stories. His novella,
Bubba Ho-tep,
was made into an award-winning film, as was
Incident On and Off a Mountain Road.
His mystery classic
Cold in July
inspired the recent major motion picture of the same name starring Michael C. Hall, Sam Shepard, and Don Johnson. Novel
The Bottoms
will soon be filmed, directed by Bill Paxton. His works have received numerous recognitions, including the Edgar, eight Bram Stoker awards, the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature, American Mystery Award, International Horror Guild Award, British Fantasy Award, and many others. His most recent novel for adults,
The Thicket,
was published last fall.
Shira Lipkin
’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in
Strange Horizons,
Apex Magazine,
Stone Telling,
Clockwork Phoenix 4,
and other wonderful magazines and anthologies; two of her stories have been recognized as Million Writers Award Notable Stories, and she has won the Rhysling Award for best short poem. She lives in Boston and, in her spare time, fights crime with the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center. Her cat is bigger than her dog.
David Liss
is the author of eight novels, most recently
The Day of Atonement.
His previous bestselling books include
The Coffee Trader
and
The Ethical Assassin,
both of which are being developed as films, and
A Conspiracy of Paper,
which is now being developed for television. Liss has written for numerous comics series including Mystery Men, Sherlock Holmes: Moriarty Lives, and Angelica Tomorrow. His website is davidliss.com.
Jonathan Maberry
is a Bram Stoker Award-winning author, writing teacher, and motivational speaker. Among his novels are
Ghost Road Blues,
Dead Man’s Song,
Bad Moon Rising,
and
Patient Zero. Fire & Ash,
fourth in the Benny Imura series, was published last year;
Fall of Night,
sequel to
Dead of Night,
was has just been released. His seventh Joe Ledger novel,
Predator One,
will be out spring 2015. He is co-editor of the anthology
Redneck Zombies From Outer Space
and editor of the forthcoming dark fantasy anthology,
Out of Tune.
His has written comics and non-fiction works as well.