SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

“Farrow!” he barked when he entered without knocking.

The sight that met him was not what he had expected. With a quick look over his shoulder, he slammed the door to the hall.

Glenn Farrow sat behind his desk, uniform jacket carelessly unbuttoned, a cigarette smoldering in the brimming ashtray before him. His slack-jawed stare was on a calendar across the room. The corner of the June page moved listlessly in the current of a desktop fan, revealing and hiding Marilyn’s glorious legs as it oscillated.

“Glenn?” Groves said. He noticed a half-empty bottle of booze on the cabinet behind the officer. “Dammit, what’s gotten into you? Report.”

Farrow turned his head. “Damage control’s under way. We’ve moved personnel. Sanitized the landing area. Destroyed all recordings. This didn’t happen.”

The general frowned. “What about the men?”

“Do you want to know?”

Groves started to say something and then just exhaled sharply. He shook his head. “Do you think they found the Luna site?”

Farrow’s pale eyes traveled to his. “We didn’t even see them coming. Of course they saw it. For all we know they’re living up there right now.” His listless fingers spun a piece of paper on his desk. “They are watching. So they said.”

“Did they say how many there were? What they wanted, other than that rubber thing?”

“They said nothing. But they know who we are. And don’t seem happy about it.”

Groves sighed. “We need to regroup. We can deal with this. I’m flying on to Langley to report. Did you get any photos of them?”

The colonel looked down and then pushed the piece of paper toward the general, turning it as he did so. “This is their leader. At least we can pick them out of a lineup if they come back.” He thought about this. “ When they come back.”

Groves whistled under his breath as he studied the drawing of the aliens that had come to visit. Thin and grey, with arms reaching nearly to their knees, their slight bodies looked as if they would have a hard time supporting their massive, hairless heads. It was the eyes, even in this crude sketch, which caught his attention. Dark and flat, they seemed to mock him, taunt him, with a promise.

From THE UNDYING: SHADES by Ethan Reid. Copyright © 2015 by Ethan Reid. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

She dreamt of the past, of the old world, her world, when planes polluted the skies and the great machine of humanity cogged forward ignorant of the approaching doomsday—of sitting with her mother in the kitchen drinking coffee, neither speaking—when people took the train, currency still had meaning, and the dead stayed so.

A vision of being wrapped in a bathrobe, perusing friends’ updates as Mom read the morning news from a tablet—a time prior to the worldwide electromagnetic pulse, and Paris, before darkness spread from the mysterious epicenter in South America, before fireballs, the long winter, and her years of trudging through the ruins, scavenging in the dirt.

Instinct forced Jeanie awake. For a moment she held her breath and listened, in case something hungry fumbled about the gardens outside. Hearing nothing, she stared through the latticed shutter as her mother’s face melded into obscurity and the new world took hold. Hints of a nightmare failing to fade, of walking the highways for weeks on end, of a familiar evil lurking in the dark, wanting in, wanting them.

Nerves, she told herself—born from too many nights where the pale ones fought to scratch their way into her sleeping place. Nearly twelve months now, and no sign. Instead of rising, she pulled the covers tight, delayed fumbling about for a candle, worried stumbling to the latrine would wake—

With a start she felt the mattress beside her, expecting Rennie’s weight—the impression of his body, the warmth of his feet touching hers—and found nothing. Sitting up, she cursed. Moonlight filtered through the cracked-open door.

Swallowing panic, she reached for her blue jeans. Stupid, falling asleep so deeply. What had she been thinking? An extra glass of wine—again? Heart racing, she slid into her sneakers, noticing the clever kid had used a chair to reach the locks.

Pulling on a T-shirt, she rushed from the portico, searching the sprawling grounds for any sign of him. In the night, he could easily tumble into the nearby ravine. Or worse.

Don’t even go there , she told herself, and glanced for his small head darting behind the rows of dried-out boxwoods. Across the gardens, the Alhambra’s battlements had provided the best sanctuary for them since the castle in Bordeaux—undamaged during the fallout, a city of supplies within walking distance, and a view for miles—yet after so many months she had allowed complacency to settle in.

Stifling the desire to call out, she hurtled over a turnstile and rushed past the dilapidated ticket counter, toward the royal complex, where tourists had once congregated. Rennie loved the older part of the Moorish fortress, where the tiny birds darted about tessellated columns and its pool reflected the moon. As she took to the gravel pathway, a throaty clicking echoed high against the rising walls and turrets.

No , she thought. Not now.

With a gasp, she broke into a frantic sprint.

Rennie smiled in the moonbeams, craning his neck to study the swallows, twisting and slicing between pillars. Long tails, split in two. The birds, so gallant in flight, darted from stilted arches where their nests clung to intricate mosaics. He had seen few animals outside the ones in books and magazines read to him at bedtime. Most beasts stalled at the point of death, like people. But not birds. He didn’t know why, but he liked to imagine that the swallows went to someplace better. He liked that idea very much.

She startled him, stumbling through a row of dead shrubs at a full tear, skidding on the path, glancing wildly about the walls where the Nasrid structures met the older stone citadel. Her anxiousness confused him. Was he in trouble?

“Stupid,” she said, repeating herself as she jerked him off his feet. He fought to keep pace as they rushed past the parapets. Across the deep gorge, he caught a glimpse of the city’s ruined buildings. From below, the rushing sounds of the river. Río, she called it. Río Darro. Once, when they had walked the highways, she called such things rivières.

“What did I do?” he asked.

“Shhh!”

“What’s happening?”

“Must’ve followed us home,” she said, panting. “That means they’re hunting in the city. Pray it’s a loner.”

They rushed deeper into the fortress, through pillared halls where disturbed swallows darted about their heads. She pulled to a stop in the middle of an overrun courtyard, bent down, and brushed the hair from his face. Her eyes sparkled in the darkness. “You can feel it, right?” she asked. “In your head? Tell me you can feel it.”

“Yes, I—I think I can.”

She shook him. “Tell me!”

“Yes,” he replied. Scared.

“Good. Quickly now.”

As they ran he glanced behind, expecting to see a gaunt face trailing in the corridor, naked, loping on all fours, blind gaze seeking, bloodied mouth opened wide, blackened claws reaching for his flesh. A cry escaped his lips. He could feel the thing toying with his mind, coaxing him—begging him to call out. Pleading, so sweetly.

Wanting to consume him.

He stumbled and she lifted him—his legs circled her waist, his arms her neck—as the beast’s awful clicking filled the hallway. Echolocating, she called it.