The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine Read online

  The Book of Apex

  Volume 1 of Apex Magazine

  Edited by

  Jason Sizemore

  Visit us online:http://www.apexbookcompany.com

  Cover Art “Machinery of the Stars” © by Vitaly S. Alexius

  Cover design by Justin Stewart

  All stories copyright of their respective author

  All rights reserved

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Front Matter

  Dedication

  Post Apocalypse—James Walton Langolf

  These Days—Katherine Sparrow

  In the Seams—Andrew C. Porter

  The Nature of Blood—George Mann

  Scenting the Dark—Mary Robinette Kowal

  The Limb Knitter—Steven Francis Murphy

  I Know an Old Lady—Nathan Rosen

  Blakenjel—Lavie Tidhar

  Behold: Skowt!—Jason Heller

  Shaded Streams Run Clearest—Geoffrey W. Cole

  Plebiscite AV3X—Jason Fisher

  A Splash of Color—William T. Vandemark

  Organ Nell—Jennifer Pelland

  A Night at the Empire—Joy Marchand

  Starter House—Jason Palmer

  On the Shadow Side of the Beast—Ruth Nestvold

  Cai and Her Ten Thousand Husbands—Gord Sellar

  Dark Planet—Lavie Tidhar

  The Puma—Theodora Goss

  The Mind of a Pig—Ekaterina Sedia

  Hindsight, in Neon—Jamie Todd Rubin

  Waiting for Jakie—Barbara Krasnoff

  Clockwork, Pathwork, and Ravens—Peter M. Ball

  Hideki and the Gnomes—Mark Lee Pearson

  Biographies

  For our longtime readers

  Post Apocalypse

  James Walton Langolf

  The letter came on Tuesday marked “Post Apocalypse.”

  It smelled like Aspen cologne and there was a smudge of barbeque sauce on one corner.

  Sarah ripped it up and threw it in the trash.

  The next one came on Friday, also marked “Post Apocalypse”, no barbeque sauce. But this one had an ornate gold seal on the flap that said, “Today is the last day of the rest of your life.”

  Cheery.

  Sarah ran it through the shredder by her desk along with the letter that said she might have already won twelve million dollars.

  When Monday’s letter came Sarah just sighed and tore off the end of the envelope.

  There was nothing inside.

  “Ha ha. Very funny.”

  Down the street, she heard the tinkling music of the ice cream truck. She stepped out onto the porch, and the mushroom cloud was on the horizon.

  A sepia colored overlay, a movie played on a life size screen, the soundtrack coming through the fillings in her teeth. All around her people were running and screaming. There was the sound of gunfire in the distance. Her neighbors’ house was burning and the ash that covered the lawn was thick enough for angels.

  Huh. Well.

  In her pocket the phone was ringing. She answered it with, “Nice touch.”

  “Like it?” Ian said. “I saw it and thought of you.”

  “It doesn’t match my outfit.”

  “Sure it does. You’re wearing the red dress I bought you. Nothing says nuclear sunset like Dolce & Gabbanna.”

  She was wearing ripped jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt.

  “When is this? I thought I had another week.”

  She pulled the R-13 form from her back pocket. Purple, the standard color for willful self-destruction. It was smudged, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t today’s date.

  “You do. I just thought you’d enjoy a little preview. Of course if this is too much for you, you could always come home.”

  “No, Ian. I couldn’t.”

  She closed the phone and headed inside to pack for her next assignment. When she looked back over her shoulder, the ice cream van idled at the corner, children in an orderly row waited for orange push-ups and popsicles.

  It looked like it might rain later.

  They’d met at a hurricane party in the French Quarter just after the turn of the 21st century. Sarah was a graduate student collecting data on pre- versus post-disaster societies. Ian was shirtless, pouring mojitos too heavy on the mint.

  The music was too loud. Guitars with strings made of razor wire, drums with an irregular rhythm, and a blue-black woman chanting low, in a language Sarah couldn’t quite decipher. She understood the hunger though. The wanting and the need. She could taste it like the sugar and salt and lime on her own skin.

  The August heat was heavy and damp. Sarah could feel the lightning inside.

  She liked his slow drawl and his quick smile, his soft grey eyes and the way his callused hands made that whispering sound across her sweat-slick skin.

  “You know,” she said, slivers of ice clinking against the side of her drinking jar, a sprig of mint pressed to her lips. “I really shouldn’t be telling you this, but that levee isn’t going to hold.”

  “What? You mean the storm? Honey, a little bit of rain ain’t going to hurt nothing.”

  Sarah ran the damp mint down the hollow of her throat, and Ian’s eyes followed it.

  “I’m not talking about just a little bit of rain.”

  He swallowed thickly and shook his head as if he was already underwater.

  “You can’t listen to a thing those old weathermen say. Fools wouldn’t know a rain cloud from a strong fart.”

  She took a step closer to him. They were almost touching now, their bodies swaying slightly in time with the band.

  “This time, they’re right.”

  “That bad, you think?”

  “Honey, I know it.”

  The muscles of his chest sang to her stroking fingertips.

  Drowning would be such a waste.

  “I can show you.”

  She breathed warm rum across his neck when she whispered in his ear. If he’d struck a match, they’d have both gone up in flames.

  The next day Sarah woke up back in her own bed with a brand new rose tattoo on her ass and an unauthorized, undocumented time traveler tangled in her sheets.

  Over breakfast she’d tried to explain and somehow Ian just...got it.

  He nodded his head as he shoveled in his eggs. He asked questions, all of them thoughtful and intelligent. He wasn’t freaked out.

  That should have been her first clue.

  “I want to go back,” he said when she finished.

  So once they’d filled out the paperwork (there was a mountain of it). They’d booked a trip for the days following the storm.

  They’d stood together on a bridge overlooking his hometown, sleeping restless beneath the green water. Trees, cars, and the bloated corpses of dogs floated by when Ian first asked her the question, “If they’d known for sure that this would happen, you suppose they could have done something different?”

  That initial question was like a stone dropped into a pond. Bigger questions, theories, disasters, rippled all around them, and it seemed like only Sarah could see the ugly, hulking shapes of things swimming just below the surface.

  Ian had asked for and received a grant from the University. He was convinced that if he could foresee the end of the world he could forestall it.

  Sarah thought he was a genius. All her life, time travel had been used for nothing but recreation or dry academic research. Together they set up the Apocalypse program intending to make a difference.

  But then they didn’t.

  Month after month, year after year, time after time, the world just kept on ending. And they watched.
>
  And watched.

  And watched.

  Sarah tried to calculate how many millions of people she’d seen die. She could barely make it to the john before she threw up.

  Still they had no idea how their own timeline would end.

  She’d tried to talk to Ian about her doubts and they’d had a fight that ended with a black eye for her, and him spitting a tooth out in his hand.

  Sarah had taken the next ticket to the end of the world. She hadn’t seen Ian since.

  The shift change seemed rougher than usual.

  Sarah was sitting at the breakfast table drinking a cup of coffee when the vortex opened practically at her feet without so much as a courtesy call. If her bag hadn’t been there beside her, she’d have been forced to go on without it—all of her research with its carefully drawn charts and painstaking notes would have been lost.

  The invisible walls of the time shift sealed tight around her, shrinking her skin and squeezing the air from her lungs. Her bones creaked with the pressure and the copper taste of blood and bile slicked her throat.

  Sarah couldn’t help feeling Ian had booked it that way on purpose to punish her.

  When the vortex opened up again and Sarah was spit out, she could tell it wasn’t the faded and lumpy linoleum of the kitchen underneath her bruised ass.

  She opened her eyes.

  She was lying on the beach who knew how many miles from the house. It shouldn’t have even been possible, but there it was.

  The water was a cool murky green. Low waves barely ruffled the surface but they still managed to pull at her left shoe. Her bag was already bobbing a few feet out.

  “Goddamn it.”

  The sky was the same odd green as the water, dotted with ugly, yellowish clouds and, once again, it seemed to be on fire.

  The letter was already there beside her on the sand, the envelope red as a wound, URGENT stamped infection black.

  “Lovely.”

  Inside was the R-13 form. Powder blue indicating a Celestial Event.

  What is the nature of The Event?

  Blanks for the date, time and weather conditions.

  Please state, in your own words, what you observed leading up to The Event.

  Be SPECIFIC.

  Remember details MATTER!!!

  Behind the form was a small white card. In Ian’s handwriting were the words, “Real time.”

  God, he could be such a dick.

  The comet, or asteroid or whatever it was, streaked through the sky apparently aiming for a point somewhere between her eyes. The wind screamed in her ears. Her teeth vibrated in their sockets and her bones felt ready to shatter. It started to break apart and chunks of fiery rock rained down around her. She could smell her hair burning and see blisters rising on her hands.

  The ocean was beginning to boil, and foul-smelling steam, like rancid fish, rose up around her. Sweat stung her eyes.

  “Shit.”

  The vortex was closed.

  She looked down at the envelope.

  “Post Apocalypse.” That joke just keeps getting funnier every time you tell it.

  Asshole.

  Sarah thought that if she had a pen she might just start filling out the form for the hell of it.

  She would write, “huge motherfucking rock” in the space next to Nature of The Event.

  August 29, 2113.

  She looked down at her watch.

  3:27 p.m.

  Weather conditions?

  Who gives a fuck?

  In her own words she wrote, “THIS SUCKS!”

  Is that specific enough?

  The vortex opened beside her and Sarah stepped through.

  The observation posts they used were more or less the same in each dimension. Sometimes the color of the walls or the stains on the shabby carpet varied, but not by much.

  The house Sarah’s vortex opened onto was positively opulent.

  She tumbled into an overstuffed Italian leather sofa, creamy and soft as meringue. The floors were marble tiles laid in a beautiful, intricate pattern. Thick, chocolate-colored, velvet drapes covered a window the length of one whole wall.

  The phone was ringing.

  “Fuck you very much, Ian,” she answered cheerily. “Nice fucking weather we’re having, don’t you think?”

  “Sarah, honey, is something wrong?”

  “I am tired of your little game, Ian.”

  She was grinding her teeth together so hard she could taste enamel dust on her tongue. Mixed with the bile in her throat, it made her feel lightheaded and a little buzzed.

  “You’re pathetic, shuffling through dimensions all these years and you’ve learned nothing except that eventually the earth always ends one way or another, and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it.”

  “Are you finished?”

  “Not even close. That was it. My last armageddon. I’m coming back, and I’m reporting you and your useless research to the University. You’re finished. How’s that for an apocalypse, you sorry piece of shit?”

  “I was calling to apologize. My timing on the last shift change was a bit off. I didn’t mean to cut it so close, but I won’t say I’m not glad for the opportunity for such a close observance.”

  The last sentence was so oily she could almost hear it squeak. The lying bastard, he was enjoying every minute of her discomfort, savoring her rage and humiliation like a warm bath.

  “We’re so close honey. I swear to you. We get just a little bit closer and then you’re gonna see it for yourself. I promise you, baby. It’s gonna be wild.”

  “I meant it, Ian. I’m going to the University.”

  “You do whatever you feel you have to. Our work doesn’t need defending.”

  He tossed that “our” out as casually as a blow dart, and she felt it prick her skin, draw a drop of blood.

  “Just tell me when the event is scheduled to occur and when you’ll have my ticket out.”

  “Don’t worry about that, Sarah. You’ve got plenty of time. I arranged a sort of vacation for you. You’ve been a lot of help to me. I’ve treated you poorly, and I’m sorry.”

  “Whatever. Let me know when you’re ready.”

  She closed the phone before he could speak again. Who knows? Some time or other they might have actually been in love.

  Out of habit she turned on the TV and switched it to a news station. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d seen nothing but rapes and murders and robberies. No prophets, no alien overlords, no countdowns to doomsday. Here was a place where they really believed things would just go on forever. Sarah could get used to that.

  She made a sandwich and poured herself a glass of wine. She was half dozing when the doorbell rang.

  Crawling across the porch was a man in a blue uniform and a jaunty hat. His neck was swollen and his face had turned the shiny blue –black color of an overripe plum. Greenish pus oozed from his sores and his eyes were filled with blood. The man was choking, his mouth opening and closing trying to speak. Spit flecked his lips and misted up into Sarah’s face. She touched the dampness with the tips of her fingers. Fever heat rolled off him like evil thoughts.

  In his outstretched hand was a smooth cream colored envelope.

  “Post Apocalypse.”

  She tore the end off the envelope and the yellow sheet fell on the ground at her feet.

  The color of plague.

  Oh no, Ian, you dirty son of a bitch. How could you?

  The mailman pitched forward across the welcome mat, sputtered and died.

  A breeze caught the paper, and it tumbled end over end down the walk into the street and out of sight.

  These Days

  Katherine Sparrow

  April is pure rot.

  Posters with body parts are wheat-pasted up and down our block. Radio stations are mid-theory about why women get the wild, men get the crack, and kids get the numb, when the signal just bleeds out into howls. No one works at the grocery store anymore, a
nd you can take what you want, but all that is left is unlabeled canned goods.

  Our band only leaves the house as a pack. We carry tin foil balls, tasers, and baseball bats. No one we see is normal. Only a couple of people show up to our gigs, and they throw bricks and bottles at us.

  At the end of April we get evicted for the fourth time in three months. Our landlord, who is at least half with it, lets us know by nailing demolition signs to our front door. At least he doesn’t blow it up while we’re inside.

  We stir-fry the last of our veggies, eat them with undercooked rice, and pour gasoline over the living-room floor. We torch it and leave.

  Outside on the concrete we watch the house turn from wood into fire. Flame fingers dance up and down the walls of the living room. The windows crack and shatter. We take a step back.

  “Where do we go now? Any ideas, Tom?” Zaki One asks.

  “Nada,” I say.

  “At least we’ve got lots of options,” Miranda says. She knuckle-rubs the shadows under her eyes. “At least there’s nothing to be scared of.”

  We watch fire climb up the stairs of the house.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Think it will be different anywhere else?” Zaki Two asks.

  “It has to be. There has to be somewhere...” I pull down my sleeves and check to make sure they hide my arm-cuts. I do little ones to let out some of my pain. I never look at Zaki and Miranda too closely. I don’t know what they have been doing to get through April. I don’t want to know.

  We have to hitch out of our neighborhood because the roads have been blocked off for days. National guardsmen with flat faces and big guns have locked it down. They pretend they don’t have the crack but shoot people all the time for no reason.

  A big rig stops for us a couple miles out from the bridge. If you can drive and are rich enough to own a car, they’ll let you out. We walk toward the trucker’s cab, but he opens up the empty cargo container in back instead.

  His shirt has an old patch that reads “Bob.”

  “What do you call a man with no arms and no legs who swims in the ocean?” I ask, as I step into the container. The smell of rotten vegetables, trash, and rough-cut steel sours my mouth.