“There she is,” I said. “The orange jump suit.”
“There are a lot of orange jump suits,” Livia said.
“Not like this one,” I said. “It’s bright orange. She’s off to the side there. She has long black hair. Very long, like yours. Like all the others, her back is to us.”
“I see her,” Livia said.
She lifted her rifle and fired right away. It was a miss. But she fired again and she hit the woman in the back. The shot knocked the woman down. She got up rather quickly, and started walking again, toward the beef.
“I want to see her face,” Livia said.
“That might not happen,” I said.
Livia fired again, hit the woman in the back of the right knee. It was a shot that not only knocked her down, but as she fell, her face turned toward us. It was still a good face, somewhat drawn, but still the face of someone pretty who had once been very pretty in life. And then she caught another shot from Livia’s rifle, this one in the face, just over the upper lip. The woman spun a little, and I think the blow from the heavy load made her neck turn in such a way that it snapped her spine.
When she was on the ground, she began to crawl toward the smell of the meat again. Her head was turned oddly on her neck, and the side of her face dragged the ground as she went.
“I want you to shoot her once,” Livia said. “Then I’ll make the kill. You shoot her in the body.”
Now there were explosions everywhere as the dead targets took hits, and even Livia’s target, the woman I had fucked, was being shot at. Bullets were smashing into the earth all around her and one took off part of her right foot.
“You shoot her,” Livia said. “You shoot her now.”
I fired and missed.
“You better hit her,” Livia said.
I fired again, hit the woman in the body. She kept crawling. Livia just sat there, watching her crawl.
“You want to finish her, better hurry before someone else gets her,” I said.
Livia looked at me. Her eyes were cold. “You better hope no one else does,” she said.
She lifted her rifle and fired. The woman’s head exploded.
After that, we began to fire at will, and I think I blew the heads off four, though someone else’s shot might have taken one of them. I couldn’t be sure. Livia hit at least seven in the head and dropped them. She hit several more in the body, and dropped them. Eventually, someone firing at the same targets got the head.
When it was all done, the guides gathered up the bodies with hooks and carried them to a large and long pile of lumber that had already been laid out and had weathered some. They put the dead on the pile and poured gasoline over all of it and set it on fire.
When the fire was going, the rifles were gathered and stored and we broke for clean up and then dinner, just as the train was starting to move.
Back in our little room we could really smell the gun oil and the stink from the firing. We decided to shower and dress for dinner. There was to be a big formal dinner in the dining car tonight, a celebration of the completion of the hunt. On the way back the train wouldn’t stop, but would run full speed night and day until we arrived back east.
Before I got in the shower, I looked at Livia, and she was obviously different, relieved, as if a poison had been drained from her. I went to the bathroom and undressed. It was tight in there and the shower was close. I turned on the water and began to soap up and shampoo my hair.
I heard the curtain slide back, and there was Livia, naked. She didn’t smile at me. She didn’t say a word. She got in and pulled back the curtain and took hold of me and got me ready and then before I knew it was happening, I was inside of her, pushing her up against the shower wall, going at her for all I was worth.
She was amazing, animal-like even. It was over quickly for both of us. We leaned together, panting. Then Livia was out of the shower, and was gone, and I was left dazed and amazed, satisfied and confused.
When I came out of the bathroom, drying myself with a towel, the lights were on, but Livia had already gone to bed. She was lying in our little bunk beneath the sheets with her back to me, her face turned to the wall. The blanket was folded back to her feet.
I was about to put on my pajamas, when she said without turning toward me, “Don’t bother with your pajamas. Put out the light and come to bed.”
I did. And we did.
It was a great, long night of love, and even as I mounted her, and enjoyed her, and she squirmed beneath me and moaned, I couldn’t help but somehow being reminded of that night with the woman we shot. Like that night, what Livia and I did was not so much making love as it was a pounding of each other’s genitals. It was a savage pelvis fight that left bruises and redness and utter exhaustion.
Later, lying beside Livia, holding her, listening to her breathe, I wondered how long it would be before things went back to the way they used to be. Not just how we could be together without the thing I had done not hanging before us in the air, but the sex, as well; how long before it became mild again, as common as a subway ride, and as boring.
I thought of that and I thought of the strange time I had had with the dead woman in a room on 41st Street, and I told myself that such a thing couldn’t happen again, but I knew too, that while Livia and I had been at it this night, when I closed my eyes, it was not Livia I saw. It was the dead woman I imagined beneath me.
What in hell were the desires of man?
No profound revelation presented itself in answer to my question.
I closed my eyes and thought about many things, but mostly I thought about that dead woman, and how she had been, and how it had been to shoot her today, and how it had made Livia and me fill up with the lava of passion. I tried to think of Livia, and our life, and how much I loved her, but in my mind all I could see was that dead girl being screwed by me or shot by us, and the Fast Train fled eastward.
Bit Rot
Charles Stross
Hello? Do you remember me?
If you are reading this text file and you don’t remember me—that’s Lilith Nakamichi-47—then you are suffering from bit rot. If you can see me, try to signal; I’ll give you a brain dump. If I’m not around, chances are I’m out on the hull, scavenging for supplies. Keep scanning, and wait for me to return. I’ve left a stash of feedstock in the storage module under your bunk: to the best of my knowledge it isn’t poisonous, but you should take no chances. If I don’t return within a couple of weeks, you should assume that either I’m suffering from bit rot myself, or I’ve been eaten by another survivor.
Or we’ve been rescued—but that’s hopelessly optimistic.
You’re probably wondering why I’m micro-embossing this file on a hunk of aluminum bulkhead instead of recording it on a soul chip. Unfortunately, spare soul chips are in short supply right now on board the Lansford Hastings.
Speaking of which: your bunk is in module B-14 on Deck C of Module Brazil. Just inside the shielding around the Number Six fusion reactor, which has never been powered up and is mothballed during interstellar cruise, making it one of the safest places aboard the ship right now. As long as you don’t unbar the door for anyone but me, it should stay that way.
You and I are template-sisters, our root identities copied from our parent. Unfortunately, along with our early memories we inherited a chunk of her wanderlust, which is probably why we are in this fix.
We are not the only survivors, but there’s been a total breakdown of cooperation; many of the others are desperate. In the unlikely event that you hear someone outside the hatch, you must be absolutely certain that it’s me before you open up—and that I’m fully autonomous. I think Jordan’s gang may have an improvised slave controller, or equivalent: it would explain a lot. Make sure I remember everything before you let me in. Otherwise you could be welcoming a zombie. Or worse.