I stepped back. By then the Stinger had both of Macy’s legs and another tentacle was sliding around her head, muffling her voice when she yelled my name one last time.
Even though she was the one full of Stinger juice, I was numb too. In the end, half a fucking second’s hesitation was all it took.
I went back inside and closed the shields. Frank was passed out on bourbon when I got back to the living room. I found a glass, filled it to the top, and drank it straight down. After a few minutes listening to Frank snort and snore, I went to look for Alex.
Geoff had his shirt off when I found them together on the bed in the ODed couple’s room. I was more puzzled than mad when I saw them kissing. Alex opened her eyes and when she saw me, she pushed Geoff off. The gun Liz and Cassandra had used to kill themselves was still sitting on the nightstand by the bed. I grabbed it and put it in my back pocket before Geoff panicked and did something stupid.
“Would you excuse us for a minute?” I said to him. He nodded and started to slink out of the room. Just before he reached the door I said, “Don’t forget your shirt, tiger.” I’d stepped back into the doorway so the little creep had to squeeze past me to get out.
When he was gone I closed the door.
At first, I couldn’t think of anything to say. I just stood there like a moron until I mumbled, “I thought you said Geoff was gay.”
“Did I say that?” said Alex like a kid caught in a lie. “He’s more like… bi.”
“And you two have been doing this how long?”
“Don’t ask stupid questions, Paul.” She started buttoning her blouse. I reached out and took one of her arms.
“I thought you loved me.”
She sighed. “I do love you, but the Macy thing…”
“That’s over. She’s gone.”
Alex looked puzzled. “What’s that mean?”
I pulled her close and whispered, “She’s gone. Dead. There’s nothing stopping us from being together. I did it for you.”
Alex stared at me for a moment like she was trying to figure out what I’d just said. Then she shoved me away hard. “Fuck you, Paul. Don’t try to put any crazy shit you did on me.”
Before I could say anything, someone screamed from the main rooms. I ran down the stairs. Geoff was pointing at Frank, who was convulsing on the sofa. Blood was already seeping through his shirt.
“Help me get him outside,” I yelled. Alex had followed me downstairs. She and Geoff grabbed Frank’s arms and I got his legs. Geoff opened the blast shields over the front door. We just barely got outside as the Floater burst from his guts and started into the air. Alex stumbled back a couple of steps.
“Get over here!” I shouted. She started for me, but she was way scared and froze. One of Frank’s tendrils grabbed her arm and pulled her up into the sky with him.
A second later, Geoff was by my side watching Alex float away. He got a funny look on his face, one I’d seen before.
“Don’t do it,” I said. “Be cool and we can survive this.”
Geoff was not cool.
He made a clumsy grab for the pistol. The little prick was faster than I’d counted on. The gun went off, almost hitting me in the leg. I grabbed him and pulled him in closer, the pistol between us. I’m honestly still not sure which one of us pulled the trigger when the gun went off the second time. All I know is that it was Geoff who hit the concrete and not me. I actually felt bad for a minute, but when the Floater’s shadow started to move, I knew what I had to do. I left Geoff’s body on the driveway, went back inside and put up the shields.
When the world’s burning, you have to make choices.
That night, I heard Macy outside the house shouting my name. I opened one of the shields over a second-floor window and saw her below. She was naked and smiling.
“Come outside,” she said.
I yelled at her. “You’ll have to try harder than that. You’re not Macy.” I closed the shield and haven’t been outside since.
The damn TV had gone off the air before someone could tell us that Stingers could look like people. And that they absorbed whatever information was in their lunch’s brain. I guess what it got from Macy was me was our anger. Stingers must also have some psychic ability to communicate with each other because the next day there were two Macys outside.
Soon there were a dozen.
Another day and it was a hundred.
Now the house is surrounded and my wife, naked and furious, stretches around me for as far as I can see.
With Frank’s supplies and everyone else gone, I’m set for the rest of my life in Xanadu. I talk to people on the shortwave sometimes. I watch movies. Listen to music. At night I sometimes take off the headphones and listen to Macy. She doesn’t always scream. Sometimes she whispers and coos, like a sly seduction. I put the headphones on right away on those nights.
The screams I can deal with, but not the sound of Macy in love.
Eventually a Stinger got into the house. I don’t know how it did it. It looked like a butcher knife and when I reached for it, it grabbed me. Fortunately, it was just a small one. I hacked it off my arm with a real knife and shoved it down the garbage disposal.
Frank had laid in a good supply of antibiotics and I’m gobbling them like popcorn. Still, the infection where the Stinger touched me is getting worse. I can feel my arm going soft, dissolving from the inside. I wrapped it in bandages and put it in a sling just so I don’t have to look at it.
I wonder if, like Frank, I’ll turn into a monster one day. By a lot of people’s standards, I guess I already have.
There’s not a lot to do around here anymore. It’s harder and harder to find people to talk to on the shortwave. I’ve tried talking to Macy a couple of times on her cooing nights. But the sound of my voice soon gets her screaming again.
Here’s the funny part, the part it took me a while to understand: There are so many Macys now that even with all the shielding over the doors and windows, if they rushed the place all at once, they’d be able to crash through. But that’s not what the Stingers want. We’re playing a game.
What they want is for me to open the doors and let them in.
When I dream now all I see is Macy’s face disappearing under a tentacle. Alex being drawn into the sky. Frank splitting open. Geoff falling to the ground.
I know that one night when the dreams get too bad, my gamey arm starts dissolving the rest of me, or I can’t stand watching Die Hard one more time, I’m going to call the Stingers’ bluff. I’ll open the doors and windows and invite them in for high tea. Will they absorb me right away?
I might be the last human in the world by then.
They might want to keep me for a while as a pet.
A memento of the early days when the world was full of people and the air wasn’t always chalk.
THE FUTURE IS BLUE
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Catherynne M. Valente is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over two dozen works of fiction and poetry, including Space Opera, Palimpsest, Deathless, Radiance, and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. She is the winner of the Andre Norton, Tiptree, Sturgeon, Prix Imaginales, Eugie Foster Memorial, Mythopoeic, Rhysling, Lambda, Locus, Sturgeon, and Hugo awards. She has been a finalist for the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards, and her story in this volume was selected for inclusion in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. She lives on an island off the coast of Maine with a small but growing menagerie of beasts, some of which are human.