Descended from Darkness: Vol II Read online

  ("I waited until he went back to the living room and snuck out my bedroom window," bragged Jeanne, after she'd finally shown up. Her pride turned into hysteria when halftime turned into a bloodbath and she realized she'd never see her family again. It was almost a mercy when one of the blasters caught her in the back, reducing her to ash and blackened bones. Almost. Annoying or not, she'd been a Fighting Pumpkin, and Fighting Pumpkins were supposed to take care of their own.)

  The entire football team showed up for the game---naturally---and so did enough of the opposing team for the coaches to decide they should go ahead and play. "We'll show those aliens what it means to be American!" said Coach Ackley, and everyone applauded.

  It was a good game. It would have been a better one if the aliens hadn't shown up at halftime and opened fire on the crowd. It took them less than five minutes to kill almost a hundred people and send the survivors scattering like quail.

  (According to the videos Amy had downloaded to her phone, the aliens actually attacked at the same time all over the world. Bridget really didn't care. She didn't have to smell the entire world getting fried, just the people on the field. So much for the home-team advantage.)

  They never even got to finish the game. Funny, the things that stop seeming like the end of the world when the world is really ending.

  Bridget pressed herself against the gym wall outside the locker room door, praying she'd managed to get the secret knock right. One missed beat and they might leave her outside, alone, in the dark, with the aliens.

  She'd been waiting just long enough to be on the verge of total panic when the door creaked open and Amy whispered, urgently, "Get in here before you're spotted. "

  Bridget was only too happy to oblige.

  Maddy, Betsy, and Kathryn were waiting in the shower room. The power was out all over town, but they had flashlights, and the screensaver on Amy's laptop gave off a soothing glow. The girls were sitting on a pile of gymnastic mats they'd dragged over from the equipment cage. Bridget blinked back sudden tears as she realized, again, that this was it; this was the squad. This might even be the entire high school. She hadn't seen any survivors in her trek across the town.

  Maddy rose as Bridget and Amy approached. Her eyes were only for the bag Bridget clutched against her chest. "Is that it?"she demanded. "Did you get it?"

  "Right where Amy said it would be." Bridget held out the bag, opening it to display the contents: a box of dinner candles and a shabby old book in a plastic library dust jacket. The word WITHDRAWN was stamped across the width of the pages in gory red. "I got matches, too."

  "Good," said Amy, taking the bag from Bridget's unresisting hands. "We'll need them."

  Maddy looked Bridget up and down. "Go get your uniform on. You're going to want to be in your colors for this."

  Maddy was the Squad Leader, and she was a senior. Questioning her went against every bone in Bridget's body. She still found the strength, somehow, to ask timidly, "Is this really going to work?"

  "It has to." Maddy shrugged. "There's nothing else left to try."

  Bridget nodded, accepting Maddy's words as truth. According to what Amy was able to find before the school wireless cut out, the aliens had taken out everything that was thrown at them, including most of the United States Armed Forces, and a Chinese nuclear bomb. They'd been most of the way to conquering the planet when the connection died. Everything had been tried, and everything had failed.

  Everything except the impossible. Bridget glanced at the three girls now sitting cross-legged on the shower floor, all of them focused on the book in Amy's hands. It would work. It had to. If it didn't...

  Well, if it didn't, it wouldn't be their problem anymore. With that reassuring thought at the front of her mind, Bridget turned to creep back to her locker. If she was going to die, she was going to do it with her cheer pants on.

  Five girls in orange and green uniforms stood in a circle in the center of the shower room, their eyes fixed on the gym bag on the floor in front of them. Inside the bag were five slips of Betsy's rose-scented pink notebook paper, each with a girl's name written on it. No one moved. Bridget was barely breathing. For the second time in a single night, and the second time in her entire life, she was afraid of what the sacred bag might ask of her.

  "Everybody understands what they need to do?" asked Amy, eyes still fixed on the bag. She'd taken out her contacts, replacing them with the glasses she was only allowed to wear when nobody outside the squad would see her. Aliens didn't count.

  Nods from the other girls. Bridget forced herself to nod with them. The bag was going to pick her. She knew the bag was going to pick her. Why were they even bothering?

  Because it was tradition, and tradition must be observed, even at the end of the world---maybe especially at the end of the world. "Then it's time," said Maddy. She picked up the bag, giving it a shake. "Who wants to pull the name?" No hands were raised. This wasn't like deciding who was going to go pick up the pizzas, or who had to go tell Coach Ackley the freshmen had been peeping in the girls' locker room again. This was too big.

  "You do it, Maddy," said Kathryn. A murmur of agreement ran through the other girls. Maddy was Captain. She'd pick the one the gym bag wanted. That was how the power worked.

  "All right." Expression grave, Maddy plunged her hand into the gym bag, rummaged around, and came up with a single slip of paper and the strong smell of roses.

  Please, thought Bridget.

  "Bridget," read Maddy. As one, the five sighed. "I'm sorry."

  "Don't be." Bridget wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, smearing tears and mascara. No one was going to say anything. Not now. "I came to tryouts on my own, remember? I cheered my heart out. That's why I'm here."

  "Fighting Pumpkins forever," said Betsy.

  It was a good thing to say. "Fighting Pumpkins forever," said Maddy. One by one, they took up the cheer, chanting it in a whisper barely louder than a sigh. Amy passed out the candles and the books of matches, while the other girls dug out their compacts, with their tiny, perfect mirrors. Only Bridget didn't bother. Her mirror was going to be bigger than that.

  "It will work," Amy said, folding Bridget's fingers around the matchbook. "Believe it's going to work like you always believed the home team was going to win. Home team advantage."

  "Home team advantage," Bridget echoed, and stayed where she was as the others stepped forward, one by one, to hug her and head for the exits. Maddy was the last to go.

  "She'll make them pay for this," she said, squeezing Bridget's shoulder, and then was gone.

  Not allowing herself to look at the candle in her hand, Bridget turned and walked after the others. She wasn't heading for the exit. She was heading for the bathroom, and the full-length mirror on the bathroom wall.

  Everything was silent. Bridget looked at her reflection, wishing she looked braver, or at least less afraid. Portrait of a cheerleader about to die. Maddy was right; she felt better knowing she was going to do it in the school colors. Other schools could laugh about their stupid mascot and garish uniforms, but real school spirit wasn't being badass with a mascot like a Tiger or a Wolf. It was being proud to be a Pumpkin.

  Her hands were shaking hard enough that it took three tries to light the candle. The match flared orange, even brighter than her uniform, before dimming into candlelight that bleached her reflection phantom-pale. She mustered a wavering smile, and waited, still watching her reflection.

  The bathroom window was open, just a crack. Enough for her to hear the first handclaps, like gunshots breaking the night, followed by Maddy's well-conditioned voice bellowing, "Ready? Okay!"

  That was the signal. Doing her best to tune out the rest of the squad cheering outside the gym, Bridget fixed her eyes on her reflection. Don't look away; Amy's book says you can't look away. If you looked away, it wouldn't work.

  ("We've all played that stupid game," Kathryn had said before they voted, before the squad agreed to try Amy's crazy suggestion. "It never works.
She never comes."

  "That was before we knew what the rules were," said Amy.

  "What are they?" asked Betsy.

  But it was Maddy who answered. Maddy, who'd seen her boyfriend die on the football field; the only Squad Leader in Fighting Pumpkins history to lose a homecoming game and the majority of her squad in a single night. "There aren't any," she said, and that was when Bridget had known they were going to go through with Amy's plan, desperate and strange as it was.)

  "Bloody Mary," whispered Bridget. "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary---" The sound of blaster fire was starting up outside; the aliens were taking the bait, drawn by the irresistible lure of four teenage girls in skimpy pleated skirts cheering their hearts out. It didn't matter what part of the galaxy you were from. No one could resist a cheerleader.

  "BLOODY MARY, SHE'S THE ONE!" screamed the Pumpkins outside the gym. "BLOODY MARY, I KILLED YOUR SON!" Each of them would have a compact on the ground in front of her, but they couldn't be sure they'd be able to maintain eye contact long enough to call her name the required thirteen times. That was why one of them had to stay behind, and miss the final cheer. Dying sucked. Dying without your squad around you was worse.

  "---Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary---" That was six. The blasters were still firing. Betsy wasn't cheering anymore, and neither was Kathryn. It was just Amy and Maddy outside, cheering their hearts out for the last, and least appreciative, audience they would ever have. Was the mirror getting blurry, or was she just crying again?

  ("See, if you hold a candle and look in the mirror while you say her name thirteen times, she'll come." Amy had been talking nonsense, but they were taking her seriously because after you'd seen your teammates fried by giant alien squid with ray guns, ray guns, for God's sake, nonsense didn't sound so bad. "She'll scratch your eyes out. That's the bad part."

  "So what's the good part?" demanded Maddy.

  "If you tell her you're the one who killed her son, she'll kill everybody she can get her hands on."

  They'd gotten very quiet after that.)

  "Bloody Mary." Amy wasn't cheering anymore. It was just Maddy, and the sound of blasters. "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary." That was ten, and Maddy screamed, just once, before the cheering from outside stopped completely. That horrible slithering sound was everywhere, coming from every direction. They were inside the gym. They were inside the gym.

  (She was really going to die. No last minute reprieve. No third-act hero. She was going to die with her Fighting Pumpkins cheer pants on, and she wouldn't even get one of those stupid yearbook memorials, because there was no one left to write it.)

  "Bloody Mary." Eleven. The mirror was definitely getting blurry, and it definitely wasn't tears. "Bloody Mary." She could almost see the face behind her own, and oh, God, if she was going to stop, it had to be now, but how could she stop, when she'd heard the squad gunned down, and the slithering just kept getting closer? Alien or evil ghost-witch-woman from inside the mirror?

  Bloody Mary might be evil. But this was homecoming weekend, and on the Planet Earth, she by-God had the home team advantage.

  "BLOODY MARY!" Bridget shouted, abandoning all pretense of quiet. "BLOODY MARY, I KILLED YOUR SON!"

  She only saw Mary for an instant as she lunged out of the mirror, hands hooked into claws and descending toward Bridget's eyes. Then came the searing pain, and she was falling, candle wax covering her hand in a spray of burning droplets. Her head slammed against the tile floor hard enough that she heard bone cracking.

  "Go Pumpkins," Bridget whispered, as the sound of the blasters started up again. A new sound came with it, dentist's-drill sharp and inhuman. She smiled despite the pain as she realized what it was. The sound of aliens, screaming. "Gimme a 'B'..."

  Bridget kept cheering in a whisper as she bled to death on the bathroom floor, not caring that there was no one left to hear her. The sound of Bloody Mary laughing and the screams of the aliens stood in well for the roar of the crowd. She died with her cheer pants on, knowing to the last that she'd done what every cheerleader dreams of.

  She'd cheered the home team to victory.

  Seafoam

  Mark Henry

  I showed up at the 49th Street Annex prepared to take a verbal beating from Klein and the rest of the Weekday Obsessives---they go after relapses like dogs on dead pheasant. Normally, after I screwed up, it'd take the group a few sessions to figure it out, but this time I couldn't hide what I'd done. There was no way. The thick pads of white gauze and bandages started just beneath my elbows and grew to ridiculous cartoonish mitts where my fists should be, a couple of conversation pieces if there ever was.

  "You get into a fight or somethin', Jer?" Klein's pipe reeked of seaweed. The smoke wrapped around his face like an Eskimo's furry hood.

  "Nope." I nodded to Fatty, who oddly enough wasn't a member for his clear problem with food, but because he couldn't stop counting. He'd count everything and probably knew how many floorboards were beneath the circle of chairs, definitely how many Oreos were left in their little plastic cells. He shook an extra cigarette from his pack and stuck it between my teeth, lit it.

  "Thanks, man," I said.

  "So you gonna tell us what happened or what?" Fatty leaned back in his creaking metal chair, his fleshy palpate drifting out from under his shirt and over the front of the seat like an apron. "Inquiring minds wanna know."

  "Yeah, Jer." Klein grinned. "What he said."

  I took a drag, let the cigarette dangle from my lip and started.

  "Remember Beverly?"

  Three months ago, Al Graibel, my self-proclaimed P.O. with a P.A.---which is not short for personal assistant, in this case---referred me to this lousy twelve-step group as part of his release maintenance plan. By referred, I mean he threatened me with a revocation if I didn't show up and stare down Dr. Klein and his neuters daily. With no intention of going back to the can simply 'cause Al got a bug up his ass, I went. A week after I started, I had a little relapse that came with a warning from my pierced friend.

  A month after that, she showed up.

  She sat in the shadows at first, a single leg, green as the sea jutting into the cone of light framing the group in the smoky auditorium. Her high-heeled mule balanced on the pad of her foot like a worm on a hook. She was silent the first two days then, on the third, just as Klein got in gear haranguing me about making a habit of sabotaging my recovery---a habit, like it's a new addiction, trading up, I'm sure he thought---she leaned forward, dark hair falling off her shoulders in waves.

  "I'm Beverly." Her voice was crushed velvet, falling off her tongue and up my arms, the lightest fingertips. Gooseflesh rose, something else too, but you don't need to know that.

  Everyone knew what she was the minute she left the shadows. The tint of her leg could be explained away as a trick of the light, but the neck scars where her gills used to be stood out like...well, gills.

  She was a Beneather. Though they'd started going by 'Neather and that doesn't much matter 'cause she was beautiful, but I'll tell you anyway.

  The 'Neathers rose from the trenches and faults under our oceans nearly ten years ago now, showed up on the shores of just about everywhere, a thousand deep and with just as many problems. They used to look more fishlike than they do as though they're mimicking us the longer they're above water. I suppose that's exactly what they're doing. Can't blame them, who doesn't want to fit in?

  Took them a couple of years to develop an audible language but after they did, you couldn't shut them up. Not that you could tell it from how quiet Beverly kept.

  I never imagined the aliens would show up any other way than in big metal saucers or some shit. The fact that they were here all along and just too deep under the water for us to realize was creepy as hell. And not just to me.

  A moment after she introduced herself was the last time we saw Chet the Paper Eater.

  "I'm not sharin' secrets with no squid," he said, and stomped out of the room.

  Klein started t
o protest, but then must have thought better and just waved as Chet slammed the auditorium door behind him. I can't say I missed the guy. It was nice to have an intact napkin to set my donut on, or one that wasn't wet with saliva.

  Beverly didn't offer up anything that night, but kept coming, each time in a sexy pair of high heels. It got to the point I didn't notice the hue of her flesh, not with her ankle popping.

  The most she ever said was, "I have a bit of an addiction problem that I'm working on to the best of my ability."

  "Is the group helping any, do you think?" asked Klein.

  She nodded.

  Right after that session, I was leaving and barreled into her like some clumsy ox, or Fatty or something, which is completely unfair---I have no idea whether Fatty is clumsy, but I certainly was.

  "Excuse me, Beverly. I'm so sorry." I held onto her arms till she gathered her balance.

  "It's really not a problem, Jerry." She pulled her arms back and hugged her wool coat around her.

  "It's Jeremy, actually. Klein calls me by the wrong name on purpose. He knows it bugs me. Said he likes to keep me on edge so I'll be quicker to learn new strategies of coping." I laughed. "It makes absolutely no sense, whatsoever.

  "And it's rude." She pursed her lips. "He should be taught a lesson."

  "He should," I agreed, I think I even chuckled.

  She smiled and bared teeth as shiny and iridescent as Mother of Pearl, an aurora.

  "Listen," I said. "Do you want to get some coffee? I meant seaweed tea. Of course, I mean tea."

  The 'Neathers were masters of evolution but couldn't stomach certain chemicals, caffeine being one of them. Kind of ironic considering my favorite coffee shop, The Pot Authority, was owned by one of the seafolk, a guy named Bill Sutcliff, serves Cuban coffee in little cups with stirrers shaped like cigars that you select from a wooden box.

  I loved that place, still do.

  We sat at a table by a sweaty window, a fake flower veiled in dust poked from a Pellegrino bottle and fingerprints dotted the lacquered surface like a pattern. Soft jazz filtered in from ceiling speakers, but the whirring of the blender and hissing of the milk steamer were the real music of the place.