He turned to face a short, pretty woman with brunette hair tied in a tight bun behind her head. She wore a lab coat, and a mask hung around her throat. Her striking blue eyes were wide, and the beginnings of a charming smile froze and died on his face as he sensed her simmering anger.
“That’s not fair!” she said. “I had zombies too!” Sitterson’s smile rose again, because he knew he could deal with this. And off to the side he sensed Hadley’s sudden interest. He stood and went to the betting board, even picking up a long thin pointer because he thought it would make him look more official. He heard a chuckle from his friend but chose to ignore it.
“Yes, you had ‘zombies.’ But this is ‘Zombie Redneck Torture Family.’” He tapped the board to indicate what he meant. “Entirely separate thing. It’s like the difference between an elephant and an elephant seal.”
The woman opened her mouth to protest, scanning the felt-marked phrases he was pointing to. Then her shoulders slumped and she turned to go, and Sitterson felt a pang of regret that she hadn’t argued more. She was cute. Maybe she’d have started to swear. He liked cute women who swore.
“There’s always next year,” he offered as she went. Still no cursing.
Truman stepped aside to let the woman through the door and closed it behind her, checking through the viewing port to make sure she really was walking away. By the fucking book, Sitterson thought. When Truman turned back and stared at the screen, he saw the soldier’s fear beneath the cool slick surface, and the doubts that must be plaguing him were something known to Sitterson. He had struggled through the same fears and doubts his first time. And though he might silently mock the man, right then he empathized. “They’re like something from a nightmare,” Truman said.
“No,” Lin disagreed. She’d remained in Control after everyone else had left, observing the betting and the results, waiting for the high-jinks to be over so she could get on with her job. “They’re something that nightmares are from. Everything in our stable is a remnant of the old world, courtesy of…” She pointed down. “You know who.”
“Monsters, magic…” Truman said, his voice trailing off.
“You get used to it,” Lin said, and she almost smiled. “Should you?” Truman countered. Lin did not reply, Truman returned to watching the screen, and Sitterson turned his back on both of them.
He’ll have plenty of sleepless nights after this during which to philosophize, he thought, recalling again his first time. Plenty.
He walked across to Hadley, who was staring up at the screens, despondent now. Sitterson knew exactly what was eating him.
“I’m sorry, man.”
“He had the conch in his hands!”
“I know. Couple more minutes, who knows what would have happened.”
Hadley sighed, frustrated.
“I’m never gonna get to see a merman.”
“Dude, be thankful,” Sitterson said. “Apparently those things are terrifying. And the clean-up on them’s a nightmare.” Hadley nodded and shrugged, but Sitterson knew that he’d react like this every year until he had his way. Still…
“So, the Buckners, huh?” Hadley said, pointing at the monitor.
“I know,” Sitterson muttered. “Well, they may be zombified pain-worshipping backwoods idiots, but… ” And he smiled.
“They’re our zombified pain-worshipping backwoods idiots,” Hadley said, grinning again as they walked back to the control panel.
“Yeah! And they have a hundred percent clearance rate.”
“True. We may as well tell Japan to take the rest of the weekend off.”
“Yeah, right,” Sitterson said, laughing. He glanced over at Lin. Still not smiling! Maybe she really is a fucking robot. Has one of them escaped? “They’re Japanese. What are they gonna do, relax?”
“I don’t know,” Hadley said, sitting back down at his console. “Maybe they can do some group calisthenics or something.”
“Ha!” Sitterson said. “So, let’s see how they’re doing then, eh?” He went to his desk and accessed his computer, and a moment later the big screen in the middle of the wall flickered from an image of the cabin’s basement to a clinical, well-lit school room.
There was movement at the top—it looked like a black and white mass shifting and throbbing in the corner of the room—and then several Japanese school children broke from the mass, running terrified as a young girl floated through the air toward them. It looked as if she was hanging from an invisible noose, but Sitterson knew better.
Her bloated, pale face and black eyes spoke volumes, and her long black hair, sopping wet and dripping as though soaked by an invisible hose, dragged along the floor behind her, shimmering as if with a life of its own.
The school kids tried to open the classroom door but it was locked.
Behind the floating girl, in the far corner, several black and white shapes were also splashed with red.
“Hmmm,” Sitterson said. “Looking good.” But he couldn’t help feeling a simmering jealousy.
He tapped a key and brought the image back to the cabin. The kids were back up from the basement. The blonde was slipping a CD into the stereo. The basement hatch was down, the dining table and chair dragged to sit on top of it.
As music blared, Sitterson spoke.
“And so the end begins.”
Marty took the armchair. He was alone, after all. He puffed determinedly on his joint, watching everyone else through a haze of smoke, and wondered what was going on. Closing his eyes, he tried to move back from where he was. Concentrate on things without the pot affecting his judgment. But still the music pounded through his senses, and the impact of dancing feet vibrated through the floor, and he opened his eyes again without arriving at any conclusions.
It was some blandly modern rock crap that Jules had slipped into the CD player. Marty didn’t even know the band’s name, though he’d heard the music enough times, blaring from the music systems of those who didn’t know better. Its members were probably multi-millionaires who owned six houses and who finished each and every gig in the shower with a dozen girls each, all of them willing to do something different. A production line of sex. He chuckled silently to himself, but the idea seemed more disturbing than funny. Music without soul and balls was not music at all, it was noise.
Dana would think the same. He watched her on the couch, reading the book she’d found and leaning against Holden, but the frown on her face had nothing to do with the vacuousness of the thundering vibes. It was something altogether different, and Marty sat up straighter as he tried to translate her expression.
She knows there’s something weird going on, too, he thought. He took another toke on the spliff, and for the first time in a long while wondered if he was smoking too much.
Jules was dancing around the large room. She sure could move, he’d say that for her. She had a gorgeous body—which he’d once had a brief opportunity to explore with his own two hands, though his memory of it, as with most of his memories, was somewhat hazed—and she was working it now, thrusting out her chest, shaking that long newly-blond hair, wiggling her ass, stomping her feet, then using the MTV-friendly guitar solos to grind her hips and work her groin. There was a film of sweat on her face which only made her glow more, and she’d popped a couple of buttons on her shirt to expose more cleavage. Her bra was visible, and the mounds of her breasts moved heavily in time with her movements.
“Sweet,” Marty muttered, his voice lost to the music. But maybe it was too sweet. Jules was cute and all, a little air-headed maybe, but generally decent and honest. He’d never thought of her as desperate.