More Bedtime Stories for the Apocalypse (15 page)

Was it?

Otherwise growing old and outlasting the
spouse you no longer loved the natural way would be murder. A much
slower, more devastating murder.

He could not stop shivering.

A double fucking homicide
.

Dawn crept into the sky, infusing the fallen
snow with a calm glow. The wind had died; the snow, too. Everything
was still.

Linda looked at Dale. It was finally light
enough to see him, to really see him. Frost had formed over his
face and slid across his dead, staring eyes.

Damn it, Dale
. She couldn’t say it
had been a great twenty-six years – not even good. But still, she’d
probably miss him.

“
Tshh.” She sighed.

She finally – easily – switched on the smart
phone she’d been holding all night, keeping it warm. The signal was
strong.

At least this way, there was the
insurance.

She dialed 9-1-1.

An operator answered. “Nine-one-one; what’s
your emergency?”

Opportunities like this didn’t come around
every day, and this one had been a
doozy
.

Linda cleared her throat. She added a tinge
of hoarseness and panic for affect.
“We’ve been in an
accident!”

* * * * *

* * * * *

Well howdy, partner! Welcome aboard. You
made it!

What’s that? You don’t have a ticket? Well,
hell’s bells, lookit here. See that? Right there? You’re on the
guest list!

Don’t look so surprised. You’re obviously
someone with a lot going for you – a lot of
gumption
as my
grand-dad used to say. We’ve got a special seat for you. The last
seat – the
very
last seat. That’s right, put your chair back
and make yourself comfortable.

What’s that?

Haw! You caught me! That’s right; truth be
told, every place we stop, every city, every town, every backwoods
hillbilly lick of humanity where we slam on the brakes...we can
always find more room. Just gotta squeeze in a little tighter. Get
a little more cozy. Because as you’ve probably figured out by now,
there’s always one last seat on the Rapture Express
.

Now remember, pardner; if you need anything,
just scream.

* * * * *

* * * * *

a bonus steampunk ghost story

by Daniel Pyle

Helm didn’t believe in ghosts. If he spotted
something pale fluttering in a shadowy room, his first assumption
was that it must be a window curtain or a trick of the light, not
some otherworldly presence there to haunt and torment him. If he
heard a groaning in the night, no matter how unnatural it might
have sounded, he knew that it was natural, that he’d heard only the
wind blowing through the trees outside or a pocket of air in the
steam pipes below the house. But his beliefs were only so strong.
When he witnessed incident after incident, when the proof began to
pile up, he finally admitted that there could be no other
explanation: his media center was haunted.

The first time it happened—or the first time
he noticed it happen anyway—he was cleaning the bedroom on the
other side of the house. The gramophone, a device he used
infrequently and usually at very low volumes, turned on of its own
volition, full blast, blaring an old song he hadn’t listened to in
years, probably waking the neighbors, although no one had come
banging on the door complaining. He’d run in and shut it off,
checking the machine for damage, but it seemed to be fine.

Twice afterwards, he’d walked into the
living room and found old children’s picture books playing on the
media center’s secondary screen. The first time, the book had been
mostly still, showing a picture of a lioness and her baby and
blinking the word cub. The second time, he found the screen
flipping through pages faster than anyone possibly could have read
them; images and words zipped across the screen, faster and faster,
becoming a multi-colored, meaningless blur. He’d shut off the
reader on both occasions, irritated the first time, uneasy the
second.

Then, the following weekend, as he sat in
his favorite recliner, the talkie he’d been watching had faded to
black, replaced by an episode of an old sitcom he hadn’t seen in
ages. He hadn’t noticed the changing-arm replace the first
cartridge with the second, but he knew it must have. Except that
was impossible. He hadn’t touched the lever box, and there was no
way the arm could have moved on its own. He’d gotten up and
inspected the equipment but still found nothing wrong.

Now it was Monday night, almost a week since
the first phenomenon, and he was sitting in the dark, quiet living
room, waiting to see what (if anything) would happen.

The power dial was spun fully closed. And
there was enough light coming from the adjoining hallway for him to
watch it and make sure it didn’t move on its own.

He waited.

Thirty minutes. An hour.

He started to feel like a lunatic. Sitting
there in a dark room, staring at a blank screen and an unmoving
valve, waiting for…what? For the machine to come to life and growl
at him?

Yes, he realized. That was exactly what he
was waiting for. That or something like it.

But nothing happened. The machine remained
quiet and still.

He got up and crossed the room. He checked
the power coil (fine), the injection chamber (half full and
unclogged), the various adjustment knobs and positioning arms (all
perfect). But something was obviously wrong with the thing. He
sealed off the injection chamber and unscrewed the power valve. The
washer inside seemed slightly worn, but not any more so than
it had been many times before, not so worn that it could have
caused these kinds of malfunctions.

Nothing could cause these kinds of
malfunctions. Nothing mechanical anyway. He was sure of it.

He decided to replace the washer anyway.
Just to be sure. He carried the valve through the house and into
the utility room. In the far corner, beside the steamer, he opened
the waist-high chest of spare parts and rummaged through the
compartments, comparing the old washer to the new ones but not
finding the size he needed.

He searched for another few fruitless
minutes before admitting he must not have had a spare. Which was
ridiculous. The washer was a #2. He could have sworn he had dozens
of 2s. Almost every device in the house used one.

He considered taking something else apart,
one of the appliances he never used, and repurposing one of their
less-worn washers, but then he wondered if he could just beg one
from the neighbor instead. He didn’t think it was too late for a
quick, can-you-help-a-guy-out visit. He tried not to be a bother
when it came to his neighbors, couldn’t remember the last time he’d
asked them for anything, or even spoken to them for that matter,
but what was one measly washer between neighbors, right? Just a
five-cent rubber disk and maybe a moment of irritation. Easily
forgotten. No big deal.

He walked back to the living room and put
the valve on the end table beside his chair. At the front door, he
slipped into a pair of old loafers and transferred a weathered
tweed hat from the coatrack to his head.

A blast of cool night air hit him when he
opened the door. He stepped out beneath a cloudless, star-speckled
sky and glanced up and down the street. Not many lights, and no
sounds at all. No couples fighting through open windows, no kids
getting in some last-minute outdoor play before bedtime. It seemed
as if most of the neighborhood had already gone to sleep, although
it was just past eight o’clock.

The house to the immediate north was black,
lifeless, as were the ones across the street, so Helm turned south,
to 801. He hadn’t seen the family that lived there in…what?…years?
Was that possible? He guessed it must have been; it had been so
long since he talked to them that he couldn’t even remember their
names.

The porch light at 801 flickered, and Helm
thought he saw another patch of light coming from around the side
of the house, from a back room maybe.

His own porch light cast a yellow arc across
his narrow lawn. He saw a patch of grass that looked as if it
hadn’t been mown all year and reminded himself to check the mowers’
navigational systems when he got a chance. He was surprised nobody
had come by complaining. The neighborhood homeowners association
had never been overly strict, but they wouldn’t normally have let a
thing like this—an eyesore like this—slide.

Helm crossed his yard and then the
neighbors’. He climbed the stairs to their small, concrete porch
and pressed his finger against the bell trigger.

He waited.

When no one had answered after what must
have been at least a full minute, he pressed the trigger again.

Still nothing.

He rapped his knuckles against the doorframe
and then against the door itself. It swung inward, creaked inward,
and Helm took a step back, frowning. This wasn’t a rough
neighborhood, but even on the most perfectly serene street in the
world, Helm couldn’t imagine anyone leaving their front door
unlocked and open. Not on purpose. Not these days.

“
Hello?” he called.

No answer. He repeated the word, louder.

He pushed the door open a bit wider,
exposing a dark living room. The light from the porch leaked across
the area just beyond the doorway but not much farther.

“
Your door is open,” he yelled into
the darkness. “Is everyone okay?”

Silence.

Something on the other side of the living
room caught his eye. A dark shape in an equally dark chair. A
person maybe, slumped and…

“
Shit!” Helm ran into the room, all
thoughts of trespassing and impropriety gone before they could
fully form.

“
Sir,” he said. “Ma’am? Are you
okay?”

As he moved deeper into the house, his eyes
adjusted to the darkness. The thing in the chair was not a person.
Not anymore.

He stepped closer to the body.

Except it wasn’t exactly a body either. The
flesh was gone. Dull white bone showed through tattered clothing. A
grinning skull stared at him with its huge, empty eye sockets.

Not a body at all. A skeleton.

An empty glass sat on the table beside the
corpse. A cobweb ran from the glass to the skull’s gaping jaw and
from there down to the arm of the chair. As Helm watched, a fat
spider crawled out of the skull’s nostril and scurried across the
web.

He screamed and spun around, expecting a
maniac with an axe to come rushing at him through the darkness,
sure he’d stumbled into the lair of some psychotic serial
killer.

But there was no one else in the room. Just
him and Mr. Bones. And no sounds from the rest of the house.

He had to go, call the police. Whatever had
happened here seemed to have happened years ago—or maybe even
decades—but did that matter?

Not to him it didn’t. Let the cops worry
about that shit; he was getting the hell out.

He turned toward the open front door and saw
the second body in the unlit hallway leading away from the living
room.

Another skeleton. Smaller. Wearing the
remains of what looked like footy pajamas.

A child.

Helm stopped and peered at the tiny body.
Its head was turned severely to the side, its arms outstretched,
reaching toward Helm. The finger bones looked curled. Like claws.
Like maybe the kid had been trying to drag himself across the
floor.

Helm stepped away.

He turned back to the front door, already
rehearsing what he’d say to the police.

I was just looking for a washer. I found the
bodies. The skeletons. Must’ve been dead for years. Their names?
Would you believe I can’t remember?

He was going to sound like an idiot.

Something moved in the back of the house,
and Helm shrieked. He ran for the door and tripped over his own
foot.

Sounds approached from the hallway. Not
footsteps but a strange series of whirs and squeaks. Helm sat up
and scooted toward the door on his butt, afraid to stand up, afraid
he’d lose his balance and fall again.

The thing in the hallway circled around the
child’s skeleton and turned away from Helm. It was the size of a
small dog and carried a half-full reservoir of water on its
back.

An auto-filler. Probably on its way to top
off a generator. Its rusty wheels looked like they might break off
at any second. Or maybe just disintegrate.

Helm coughed out a sound that was half laugh
and half groan. He got to his feet and hurried out of the house,
closing the door behind himself, very careful not to look back at
either heap of bones.

Outside, every bush looked like a looming
monster, every shadow an approaching attacker. He jumped off the
porch and stumbled across the yard toward his house.

He was so focused on his door, on getting
back behind it and locking it tight, that he forgot about the patch
of overgrown grass and ran right through it. His foot struck
something hard, and he fell again, this time on his face, the tall
grass slapping at his cheeks and knocking off his hat.

His hand came down on what felt like a
bundle of hard tree branches. He pushed himself to his hands and
knees and looked down.

Moonlight and starlight shone down through
the grass, revealing a third skeleton. This one yellowed and
missing several teeth.

Helm opened his mouth to scream again, but
no sound came out.

He crawled away from the body and out of the
unmown grass. His front door looked a million miles away.