Michael Shanks is a Canadian actor best known for his role as Dr. Daniel Jackson in the Stargate universe. He’s known universally as a nice guy, an ice hockey fan, and the lucky guy who married fanboy favorite Lexa Doig.

Of late, Michael has been in a number of high-profile shows, including recurring guest roles in the Kiefer Sutherland show 24 and the USA Network’s spy thriller Burn Notice. His latest work includes co-starring in the Hallmark movie Living Out Loud (along with Gail O’Grady, airing May 8th at 9 p.m. and May 17th at 9 p.m. on the Hallmark Channel) and filming a television pilot titled The Eastmans (co-starring Donald Sutherland, Jacqueline Bisset, and Saffron Burrows).

Sara M. Harvey (author of The Convent of the Pure) spoke to Michael via telephone in late April.

Sara M. Harvey: Hi Michael. Perhaps you are best known in the geek world for your role on Stargate–

Michael Shanks: I like to call it the “intelligent world population.” Much nicer.

SH: So, what is it like being a genre icon?

MS: It’s no different than my normal life, I suppose. It’s a job, a very fun job. In terms of the fanfare, that’s for the media. I live my life pretty normally and go to work like everyone else, but it’s fun to be a part of something that people follow so tightly and feverishly.

SH: How did you like working on shows such as 24 and Burn Notice?

MS: Those shows, in themselves, are like genre shows. They’re not terribly different–the techno-babble is just less SF. They’re both action shows similar to Stargate. Sometimes shows like that are even more absurd than the SF shows. At least some of the odder action elements on the SF shows happen on places like spaceships and alien worlds. It allows for a greater, more logical suspension of disbelief.

SH: Who do you want on your side in a fight? Michael Westen or Jack Bauer?

MS: Oh boy, that’s a tough one! I’d put it on Bauer because he’s a little nastier, while Westen has a bit of a conscious. Bauer would just eat your opponent’s face a la Hannibal Lecter. Jeffery [Donovan, who plays Westen], though, he’s a nimble fighter, agile. He’s a black belt. I’m a bit more of a boxer and he was certainly a lot more adept at the choreography during filming than I was.

SH: Do you have any interesting behind-the-scenes stories to share about Bruce Campbell from your time on Burn Notice?

MS: Well, the best thing I can say is that Bruce is…exactly what you would expect, in a completely good way. He’s self-effacing, he’s very funny, and he’s very down to earth. We really only had one scene we shared on Burn Notice, and we sat in-between the takes shooting the crap about our backgrounds and filming in Bulgaria. He’s a smart man who knows the animal that he is and is trying to take a more creative front with the success he’s had. I told him my wife was a big fan and he got on the phone with her and they chatted for a bit. He’s exactly what you would expect in exactly the best way.

SH: It’s good to hear he’s really so genuine. By the way, I hear the same thing about you from my Stargate friends.

MS: Haha…well, it’s true about Bruce. He’d probably punch me in the face if he heard me waxing poetic about him.

SH: On to more recent stuff. You’re going to be starring with Gail O’Grady in Living Out Loud on the Hallmark Channel. Tell us a bit about that. It’s somewhat of a departure from what you have been doing.

MS: Yeah, actually we filmed it over a year ago. It was meant for Mother’s Day, but some sponsorship issues delayed things so it’s been on hold. It’s a…feel-good cancer movie?

SH: That is a weird combination to put together.

MS: What’s great about it is that I’ve only done one or two slice-of-life types of stories and this is definitely one of those. It’s epic in its simplicity in terms of human emotion. This movie was something I could relate to better than many of the other things I’ve filmed. I’m a father and husband myself, and the movie actually dredged up some things in my personal life that made me question myself and maybe answered some questions for me.

My character, Brad, is a father and husband who thinks he’s doing the best he can and is trying to make the most of his career for the sake of his family. He just wants to help get his family back to the place they were before the cancer. But he realizes, with his wife, that where they were is not where they wanted to be and maybe they weren’t as close as they thought they were. And that there are more important things than getting a better job and making more money, such as being with your family. There’s a nice character arc that addresses the revelations he experiences; it’s a much deeper plot than I’m used to. It made me think, after a few weeks, “I want to go back to the gunfire and action!”

SH: You also have a great online presence with your charity bazaar. What inspired that and how can our readers get involved?

MS: I give a lot of credit to the gals who run the web site, who do so out out of the goodness of their hearts. They created this wonderful thing for the MS Society of Canada. Multiple sclerosis, obviously, affects a great many people. It hadn’t been much apparent in my life until I met my wife, Alexa, whose father has suffered from MS since she was about eight years old. It’s been a difficult journey for her family and it’s shaped the person she is. Obviously, he’s past the point of a quick cure, and he’s confined to a wheelchair. The ladies running the site came up with the idea for the charity. I would provide and sign things that would be put up on eBay. But then a lot of actors approached us and offered signed items on their behalf, so it’s turned into quite a big deal. We’ve raised $100,000 dollars in a few short years.

SH: That’s fantastic! You’re from Canada and I know that you play hockey. So who did you play for and what position did you play?

MS: I played up through university. I played one year with the UBC Thunderbirds JV team. I played less than a year because I was trying to play rugby, hockey, do theatre, and get a degree in business, and I ended up quitting almost everything and going into theatre. Go figure.

SH: What position did you play?

MS: I played defense.

SH: Oh, I love a good D-man. Are you a Canucks fan? I saw you with a puckhead hat on that said Vancouver Canucks.

MS: Yes, I’m a long-suffering Canucks fan. I will admit to that.

SH: As somebody who does genre stuff for a very educated public, do you enjoy reading genre fiction?

MS: I do not. I’m not a huge reader. I used to be as a kid. My wife is a huge reader and reads like a book a night. The things that I read nowadays are generally nonfiction, a lot of biographies, anything to do with politics and the recent wars. I’ve gotten into reading nonfiction spy biographies. But I’m just not an avid reader. I’m a big movie guy. I have a big collection at home.

SH: Ah, that’s my next question. Do you like genre films?

MS: I love genre films! Give me a good Terminator movie, Aliens, Terminator 2, films that show the human condition pushed to extremes. The latest Star Wars movies really disappointed me, and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a colossal disappointment.

SH: What’s your number one favorite?

MS: All of them…that’s tough one. Probably I would say Aliens is my all-time favorite SF movie.

SH: Wrapping up, where can we find you next on the big screen or television, aside from Living Out Loud? What’s your next big project?

MS: I finished a movie in November called Desperate Escape with Elisabeth Röhm. And I just finished a pilot with Warner Brothers called The Eastmans with Donald Sutherland, Jacqueline Bisset, and Saffron Burrows that is about a family of doctors named “Eastman.” Donald and Jacqueline have five kids. I play the best friend of one of the sons, and I’m having an affair with Jacqueline Bisset.

SH: You also do a lot of fan conventions. Where will we be seeing you next in the flesh?

MS: I think the next one is supposed to be in July at the London Film Festival, then ComicCon, and DragonCon in Atlanta, and another CreationCon in Chicago.

SH: Thank you so much for your time and answers!

MS: Thank you, it’s been great!

About the Interviewer
Sara M. Harvey made her fiction debut in 2006 with the romantic urban fantasy A Year and a Day. In 2008, she turned her attention to horror with The Convent of the Pure, the first in a novella trilogy set in a Steampunk universe. Sara is also a costumer and works as an assistant costume designer, an instructor in costume and fashion design, as well as a contributor to costume history textbooks. She lives in Nashville, TN, with her husband and fellow author, Matt, and their dogs, Guinevere and Eowyn.

There were twelve moons in the night sky: one from this dimension, the others reflections of the eleven dimensions. One switched off like a computer monitor. On the blank screen, Hideki watched the Space Shuttle, Confronter, hurtling to Earth, out of control.

There were eleven moons in the night sky: one from this universe, the others from ten parallel universes. One turned off like a television, digital blocks deconstructing a digital world. There was a high pitched screeching. Hideki ran into the garden to witness a Boeing 747 crash into the garden next door. According to the Ten O’clock News, planes were falling out of the sky worldwide, for no apparent reason.

There were ten moons in the night sky: one orbiting this world, the others orbiting nine parallel worlds. One faded slowly into the black analog tube. Hideki stood by the fishpond and called up to his mother’s bedroom window. She was in bed watching the Ten O’clock News. The screen showed a picture of a man in a shopping center, reeling on the ground, holding his throat in pain as if he’d swallowed his entire set of false teeth.

There were nine moons in the night sky: one from this time, the others from other times. One cut the radio signals, killing the static and the background radiation. Hideki ran into the house and up the stairs to his mother’s room. He yelled at her, “We have to go, now! There are only eight moons left.” She didn’t see the significance, so he dragged her out of bed.

There were eight moons in the night sky: one made of rock, the seven others made from each of the sins. One expired like a lighthouse in a blackout. Magnetic fields moved, and migrating birds lost their way. Hideki dragged his mother, kicking and screaming, down the stairs. He bound her from head to toe with a twenty meter LAN wire.

There were seven moons in the night sky: one made of rock, and six made of cheese. One was swallowed up by the dark night sky. Birds hit the windows. Hideki pulled down the shutters and then went through his father’s desk, looking for the gun.

There were six moons in the sky: one for each of the bullets Hideki loaded into the gun chambers.

There were five moons in the sky: four signifying death, and one signifying nothing. Hideki’s mother lay sprawled on the tatami with a hole in her head.

There were four moons in the sky: one real, and the others symbolizing the Holy Trinity. Hideki stuffed his mother’s body into the refrigerator, nailed the door closed and then cleaned the tatami mat.

There were three moons in the sky: one true, one false, one neither true nor false. Hideki pulled the plug, sending asteroids hurtling towards Earth. He led the gnomes at the garden pond to a revolution.

There were two moons in the sky: one for reason, one for folly. Hideki had the switch now. He had to make a choice for his people. Men and women ran for cover as mushrooms pushed their way up through the lawns, signaling dawn.

There was one moon in the sky; Hideki and the gnomes worshipped it, but they were unsure whether it was the right one.

Mark Lee Pearson’s fiction has appeared (or will soon appear) in Space and Time, The Book of Tentacles, Monkeybicycle, Alienskin, Strange,Weird, and Wonderful, Liars’ League, Twisted Tongue, Susurrus Press, and Eternal Press. He lives and works in Japan, teaching English by day and writing tall tales at night. Come and visit his blog at markleepearson.blogspot.com

Jackson said she’d been hanging with the Corvidae before he found her, that she was one of those girls that bounced between gangers named Jackdaw6 or Raven8. They’d pumped her full of genemorphs laced with avian DNA, hoping she’d be lucky and avoid the bad reaction. It had already affected her teeth, turning the molars into rotting shards. Her lips were growing hard, thickening into dark cartilage, and I could see the shadow of her organs beneath the bleached skin stretched across her ribcage. Jackson said he found her wandering in the alley behind the crow boy’s nest, trying to staunch the fluid seeping from her fresh-plucked eye-socket. He brought her home, patched her up, and turned her over to me for safe-keeping while he went downstairs to work. I stood over her and watched her, letting the hours tick by, and eventually I kissed her.

My kiss didn’t wake her, though she stirred a little at my touch. Downside is not a place where fairytales happen, and no-one would mistake me for a handsome prince. It was a clumsy kiss, as you’d expect, but a kiss. A kiss!

When she did not wake I stood, resuming my vigil. I could feel myself blushing, my right cheek warm. I turned my other cheek towards her, hiding behind the copper mask.

Even now, looking back, I’m still not sure why I did it. It’s not as if she was a pretty thing, with her bruises and her missing eye, but there was still some remnant of beauty beneath the blue stitches of Jackson’s repair. She was a creature of the Downside streets, all feral promise and rough allure. I didn’t love her – that would be unseemly for a half-man like me – but I envied her, desperately, for the blue stitching that held her together and the heart that still beat in her chest. I wished, for just a moment, that Jackson had done the same for me. I could feel the steady flick of that pulse when our lips touched. It was alive; faint, but eager to exist. My own heart ticked on, steady and regular, the soft tick-tock marking a regular beat as it pulped blood through those veins I still possessed.

Jackson wanted to be a hero, I knew that without asking. When I was little, just after he took me in, Jackson used to tell me stories about heroes, about knights and princes and ducks that turned into swans. I would listen to his stories, curled up in bed, crying as the pain of a new graft wracked my chest and shoulder. I had to ignore the sound of the gangs and the crowds that filled the Downside streets, the occasional brawl or gunshot cutting through the din. Jackson would fill my head with heroes, with worlds where heroes still existed. I never believed in his stories, but I always believed in Jackson. It was easier, cleaner, but it was just as dangerous in the end.

The girl slept for three days, sedated and monitored. I spent my nights watching her fight against the painkillers, twisting against the thin sheets in Jackson’s cot. I was afraid to move, afraid the grinding cogs in my arms would disturb her bad dreams. I dreamt of kissing her again, dreamt of her waking up and looking on my copper mask and grafted limbs without the inevitable shudder. It was not to be. She woke in the dim light of the third morning, jettisoned from her nightmares with a gurgling scream. She cast about the room with her good eye, looking for something familiar, but all she got was me, and the mangled nubbin of flesh that had been her tongue started making strangled sounds that could have been words. I knelt beside her, putting my good hand on hers, making sure there was contact between her flesh and mine.

“It’s okay,” I said. “You’re safe here.”

She struggled and I held her down, the steady tick-tock of my heart frightening her more than the cold grip of my hand. She had a coppery, nervous scent and I saw blood stains on her bandages. Her good eye stared at my face as I leaned in to check the stitches. She waited, trembling and sluggish, still woozy from the barbiturates. I pulled back and limped away. She was scared of me, so scared her fear emerged through the painkiller haze, and I couldn’t calm her down.

“You’ve pulled your stitches,” I told her. I couldn’t make my voice sound soothing, no matter how hard I tried. “You’re bleeding. Wait here, I’ll go get Jackson.” And I ran, fleeing the bedroom, as she let loose an angry gurgle that should have been a scream.

There was comfort in the clutter of Jackson’s workshop downstairs; the overburdened workbenches piled high with bits of clockwork and old tech and equipment we scavenged from the burnt-out hospital on the river. I followed the sound of Jackson’s snoring through the cramped maze of junk and spare parts, found him in the overstuffed chair he left by the boiler, soaking up warmth as he slept. He looked old, even for Jackson, the wrinkled features like the grooves of a thumbprint, the wisps of hair hanging limp around his face. I leant over and shook him, letting the metal fingers close over his shoulder. “Jackson,” I said. “Jackson, the girl’s awake.”

He slept, stubbornly, until I placed a cold right hand against his bare forehead. Jackson had built me that arm from scratch, and the one I’d worn before it, and the one before that. Its touch woke him faster than any jostling or loud noise ever could. “Randal?” he said, blinking. His eyes were never good, especially in the dark. I lifted the notebook off his lap and helped him to his feet, setting his journal on a nearby bench while he straightened himself up.

“It’s morning, Jackson,” I told him. The left side of my mouth twisted into a wry smile. “She’s awake and she’s pulled some stitches. I think I might have frightened her.”

“She’ll calm down,” he said. “And pulling the stitches won’t harm her anymore than she’s been harmed.” Jackson rubbed his eyes with one hand and smiled his forlorn smile. “How is she?”

“Struggling to speak.” I clenched my fist, metal straining against metal. “They took her tongue, Jackson. The crow boys, they cut it right out.” It was a mistake to mention the tongue. Jackson nodded, eyes growing distant, and I knew that I’d lost him, that his mind had the association it needed to turn towards to his beloved work. Jackson picked up his notebook, finger tracing the anatomical sketches and blueprints. He was making plans, figuring out a way to replace what was lost. I touched his arm again.

“We should run,” I said. “We can. She’s awake now. We should run before they come for her.”

Jackson looked up and shook his head. “It would kill her,” he said. “To move her now, so soon, so soon after…” He shook his head again and sighed. “We need a week. Maybe two. Enough time for her to heal. Then we can leave. Then we can run.” His eyes dropped to the notebook as he said it, the blue-and-black plans and the detailed annotations. There was a thump upstairs as she fell out of bed. A loud moan of pain filtering down through the floorboards. I thought of the mangled face, the blue stitching and the scars. Beaten by the Corvidae, Jackson had said. We both knew what would happen when they realised the girl had lived.

“They’ll find us before then,” I told him.

“I know.” My heart beat, tick-tock, tick-tock, as I watched Jackson blink back tears. His face set, trying to hold back a shiver of fear. The Corvidae were bad news; both of us knew that. He put his hand on my shoulder, fingers wrapping across the scars. “But I’m going to take care of her,” Jackson said. “She didn’t deserve this, Randal.”

No-one ever does. Jackson didn’t look at me, just tore a page from his notebook and held it out. It was a list of parts, carefully annotated, written in Jackson’s sloppy script. I ran down the list, noting the unfamiliar names. They were small parts, tiny. Expensive, too, with our finances.

“I’ll take care of her stitches,” Jackson said, limping towards the stairs. “It will be okay, Randal. We’ll get away before you know it.”

I double-checked the locks as I left, nervous about leaving him alone. Most of the time, shopping for Jackson takes effort rather than money. This time he was working small, and that meant parts with names I didn’t recognise. Technology; state of the art; the kind with names that read like a secret code. Finding those parts meant someone with black-market contacts. It meant shopping fast and getting off the streets before someone noticed what I was doing. It meant Jackie Pelican.

I went down to the river and found him sitting near the harbour tunnel, hawking cheap tech to Cityside tourists heading home after a day in their favourite kink-house. There was an art to the way Jackie worked, pretending to thumb a ride and then hustling the drivers with cheap promises and stolen tech the moment the car stopped. Pelican always said that anyone stupid enough to stop for a Downsider wearing six jackets as he thumbed a ride was going to be an easy mark for his patter, and it turned out he was right more often than not.

He was cutting a deal when I found him, a lump of layered coats and furs pushing data-chips through the window of a Cityside Lexus. I hung back, out of sight. The Pelican didn’t need me interrupting his business, and I knew better than to get in his way. It took him five, maybe six minutes to close the deal. Money changed hands and the Lexus sped off, threading into the tunnel that linked the Downside grime with the towers and gleaming lights of the city. The Pelican stood by the side of the road, shuffling through his bills, then nodded and slipped the cash into the pockets of his second jacket. I lumbered across the concrete, coming up behind him. Pelican heard me coming, recognised the tick and the steady thump of my limp. “Randal,” he said, making a wide turn, his small face beaming among the layered jacket collars. I clapped Pelican on the shoulder and the gears in my arm groaned. He feigned a shudder at the noise. “Clockwork was a bad fad, Randy. When are you going to let me fix you up with something a little less retro?”

“I don’t have money for your upgrades, Pelican. You know that.”

“You could work it off, Randal,” Pelican said. “You’re a good kid, talented, and you’re wasted in Jackson’s workshop. I’m sure I could find a job for you.”

“I like the workshop,” I said. “It’s homey.”

Pelican rolled his eyes and laughed, the thick layers of coats wobbling, his throat swelling up as his humour boomed out. “Fine,” he said. “If you can’t be lured away from the aging reprobate, why don’t you tell me what the Pelican can do for you? I assume Jackson’s sent you on another shopping trip?”

I held out the list and pointed at the items I needed, letting the Pelican study them through the cracked lens of his glasses. He puffed his cheeks out as his read, fleshy jowls ballooning as he chewed on the air. “That’s a strange list, Randal. What’s Jackson up to?”

“I don’t know, but if I had to guess…”

“Yeah?”

I shook my head and shrugged. “If I had to guess, I’d say he’s building someone a tongue.”

The Pelican’s eyes went narrow and his teeth clicked together. He breathed in, hissing. “A tongue for whom?”

He was standing straight now, drawing up to his full height, bulging jowls starting to quiver. I stumbled backwards, putting weight on the bad leg. Jackie didn’t move to help me, he just settled back into the seat he kept near his hitching spot. “I don’t know,” I said. “Some girl he found.”

The Pelican whistled through his yellowing teeth. “Jackson and his strays,” he said. “Fuck.” He closed his eyes and quivered. I knelt down next to him, waited for him to explain, watching the watery eyes that refused to meet mine. I put the clockwork arm on his shoulder, let him feel its weight.

“What do you know, Jackie Pelican?”

The Pelican let out a soft snort, glancing to either side. “Nothing, kid,” he said. “I know nothing. Just be careful, okay?”

He smiled at me, cheeks rosy, and named me a price. I paid it and collected the parts, lugged them home, worrying.

Jackson had the girl awake by the time I made it back, the steady patter of his speech broken by the stilted syllables of a synthesizer linked to a touch pad. I listened to the dead, cold voice as it answered questions, carrying on her half of the conversation. It was raspy, empty. There were better programs available, but Jackson preferred the retro feel of passive inflections and static. I put the supplies down on the nearest workbench and locked the door, double checking all three deadbolts before stepping back. The alleyway outside was empty, dark even during the day, but talking to Pelican had left me feeling anxious and worried about what was coming. I’d stumbled down three or four different alleyways on my way home, backtracking and cutting through side-streets. I wondered how long it would be before I was actually being followed; sooner or later the news that the girl had survived would filter its way to the Corvidae and they’d come looking for her. I contemplated pulling a workbench in front of the door, damn the mess that moving one would make.

“Randal?” Jackson’s voice floated down the stairwell. “Randal, is that you?” There was fear in his voice, but he disguised it well.

“It’s me.” I limped to the stairwell and waved.

“Randal,” Jackson said, “Come up and meet our guest.” I shook my head and Jackson frowned at me, his thick eyebrows drawing together. I pointed to the lopsided mask, the arm that had frightened her earlier, and Jackson snorted

“Randal,” he said, and I lowered my head. I started climbing up the stairs, my right foot thumping on the wood. Jackson smiled and took my arm as I reached the top, leading me into the room. The girl was still limp, still caught in the numb painkiller haze, she shuddered when she saw my face. Jackson led me over and sat on the corner of the cot. “This is Randal,” he said, keeping his voice calm and low. “You’d call him my assistant, I guess. He took care of you during the evenings.”

“Hi,” I said. I gave her a lopsided grin. “You look like you’re healing well.”

She was pale now, paler than when I’d left the workshop, and there were bloodstains on her bandages. Jackson had been drugging her, prepping her for more surgery, re-working the lines of blue stitches that held her battered body together. There were sutures on her cheeks that hadn’t been there when I left. The girl scratched her hand across the touchpad, letting the computer beside the cot translate the movements into speech. Thank. You. Randal. My. Name. Is. Rose.

There was something lucid beneath the drug haze, something aware of where she’d found herself. She studied my face with her good eye, following the lines of steel and scarred skin, suddenly focused on what those scars could mean. “It’s an old job,” I said. “And I’m too cantankerous a patient for Jackson to replace things or make them pretty. Don’t worry; he’ll make sure you’re still beautiful when he’s done.”

She smiled at me then, a terrible expression on her broken face, and winced as the smile tugged at the sutures. Jackson slipped a hypodermic into her neck, easing opiates into her bloodstream. I stepped back, giving him room, watching as she went under.

“Sleep now, Miss Rose,” Jackson said. “We’ll have you up and talking soon.” She shook her head, fingers fumbling for the pad, but the drugs hit and she faded. Her hand went limp again.

Jackson stood up and ran his fingers through the pale wisps of his hair, looking pensive as she studied the ruin of her face. “She isn’t going to be pretty, Randal. You shouldn’t have lied to her.”

I turned around and walked towards the stairs.

“She’ll be pretty enough,” I said. “You’ll rebuild her and she’ll be pretty enough.”

We both knew he planned to install the tongue before we ran away.

We argued after that, Jackson and I. Argued about running, about rescuing the girl, about trying to install a new tongue while we both knew the Corvidae were coming to find us. Jackson won, as always; he’s a smart man, and he has arguments aplenty when he needs them.

“We shall stay,” he said. “Who would find us, if they looked for her? Who would even consider looking for a girl in a place like this?”

“Pelican knows,” I told him. “He knew the moment I asked for the parts. He knows, Jackson, and they’ll know to ask him. They’re looking, Jackson. They’re going to come.”

Jackson shook his head, his eyes sad. “We are safe enough, Randall. She’ll heal before they find us, and there is always the tunnel if she does not. Pelican knows many things, but he does not know about that.” He settled down behind his workbench, sitting in the battered hardwood chair with its back stiff and straight like a throne. Jackson, king of clockwork, master of the world he surveyed. I didn’t share his faith in the tunnel. We could get out if we used it, yes, but we still had to run. And the tunnel has been here longer than I have, longer than Jackson and his towering piles of junk. He always told me it was a service entrance, built in the days when the workshop was home to grander creations than ours. It wasn’t a secret then, and it was barely a secret now.

That night I took a lantern and walked down the dark length of the tunnel. We had used it as a graveyard, a crypt for the gutted husks of grandfather clocks we’d salvaged for parts. The slow tick-tock of my heart echoed against the stones, mocking the dead clock-faces.

“Safe enough,” I told myself, and the words echoed off the walls. It took hours to clear a path, to make sure the tunnel was ready if we needed it. I checked the locks and the keys at the far end, just to be sure. I ambled down the narrow corridor. It would be a short sprint, if running was needed, but I’m not built for speed and Jackson was old. My faith in his plan waned as I contemplated the possibilities.

They found us the day after Jackson installed Rose’s new tongue.

Jackson and Rose were asleep when it happened. He, lost in a quiet slump beside the cot, she, twisting and turning through another night of medicated slumber. I stood by the doorway, my heart a metronome beat beneath the steady rhythm of Jackson’s snoring, and I heard the muffled thump in the workshop downstairs. I thought it might have been an invention, or a pile of Jackson’s parts collapsing in the night. Such things weren’t unheard of in a workshop such as ours. It wasn’t until the second thump, and then the third, that I realized what it was: someone kicking, hammering, trying to batter down our door. I heard the wood give way, the locks bending inwards, the soft crunch of someone walking across the workshop floor.

We had an intruder, and that wasn’t a pleasant thought.

I heard the glass face of Jackson’s second-favourite clock shattering beneath a heavy fist, and I allowed myself a few seconds to consider the merits of cowardice. It was tempting; I am ill-equipped for stealth, what with my steel-shod limp and the endless tick-tock tick-tock eliminating the possibility of approaching unannounced. Investigation meant a confrontation, facing the intruder down, and I was coward enough that the thought gave me pause.

I picked up Jackson’s poker, a cast-iron antique he’d acquired at an auction. I’d scoffed at him when he bought it, claiming it was useless, but it felt comforting to have a weapon in hand. The poker felt solid, weighted for a quick swing should I need to bludgeon a potential thief, and I held it before me as I limped down the stairs and switched on the workshop lights.

There was a Corvidae in the workshop, languid and ready for my approach. He was an angry snarl of a boy, just like the rest of them, black-feather hair, fingers like raptor talons, eyes as smooth and dark as marbles. He stank of carrion, thick and overripe. I raised the poker, holding it like a sword, ready to cave in the boy’s skull with its iron head. The Corvidae sneered. “Ya bully dreaming, Tick-Tock. Me-and-I pluck your vitreous; squish-squish, sweet’n’juicy, yum-yum-ha.” He cawed then, cackling. He had a crow’s laugh, a harsh croak. “Where da patch?”

I charged him, swinging the poker, a futile gesture fuelled by anger and fear. He moved fast, a dash of shadow against the sulphurous yellow light. It didn’t take long, no more than three ticks of my heart, and it was over. I saw him move, felt the poker rip free of my hand, then he crashed backwards with his hollow weight bearing me to the floor. I looked up into a wicked grin, grubby talons hovering over my eyes.

“Where da patch?” he croaked. He kept his voice low, all secret whispers. I shook my head. “Gone,” I said. “Jackson’s gone. He isn’t here.”

His talons wove an eager pattern in the air as a narrow, black tongue licked pointed Corvidae teeth. “Where da girl den, Tick-Tock? You hide our pretty-pretty, our little birdy-bird? We want her back, Tick-Tock. Gotta finish what we started.”

“She’s not hiding.” My treacherous voice quavered, just a little, giving away my fear. “She’s not here, she ran away.”

The Corvidae gave me a harlequin’s smile, leaning forwards to run his long tongue across the tender flesh of my good eye. “Tell da patch I came, Tick-Tock. Tell him Rook3 wants ‘is dolly back, no matter what.” And I nodded, stiff-necked, my eye following the pointed claw dancing a hair’s breadth from my pupil. Rook3 laughed, drunk on my fear. He floated to his feet in a flurry of limbs, dancing and spinning his way to the gaping maw of our broken doorway. “Me-and-I be seeing you, Tick-Tock,” he said, and then he was gone, nothing more than a caw of laughter on the wind.

I lay on the floor for a long time.

Jackson had shown me his blueprints for my arm and chest, the detailed plans and notes he’d compiled explaining how and why they work. I know that there are three-hundred and fifty-seven cogs and gears in my arm alone. I lay on the ground and listened to my heart, the steady tick-tock that never felt the surge of adrenaline, never sped up when danger loomed. When I flexed my fingers, pondering their movement, I knew that another hundred and twenty cogs came to life. I tried to console myself with this knowledge, telling myself that clocks are works of precision and delicacy, that they do not lend themselves to strength, or violence.

It didn’t help.

Jackson unlocked the bedroom door; his feet padded down the stairs. My good arm trembled. Jackson stood next to me, staring at the broken door. “They came,” he said.

“Just one.” I stood up, busying myself clearing a bench, moving the junk onto the surrounding piles. When I was done I tipped it on its side, pushing it against the doorframe to replace the door. I leant my weight against it, holding it secure. “He’s fast and he’s angry. I’m sure he’ll collect the rest of them.”

Jackson clucked his tongue and forced me to sit, fussing with my arm. He checked mechanisms and servos, double-checking to be sure. He always worried when I fell, always wanted to make sure that I hadn’t damaged the intricate parts of his creation. “They want her back, Jackson,” I told him. “They want us to hand her over, or they’ll kill us both. Kill us and eat our eyes.”

Jackson bowed his head and kept his attention on the arm. His face pinched, locked into a frown of concentration. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’ll keep her safe, somehow.”

“We need to run. Tonight.”

Jackson shook his head, closed the casing on my arm. “If they found us, it’s too late. They’re expecting us to run and she still needs rest, another day or two at least. We need to stay, keep them out somehow. Give her time to heal, then use the tunnel to sneak away.”

I looked at the upright bench, thinner and weaker than our stout wooden door. “How?”

“Somehow,” Jackson said. He rapped my arm with a sharp knuckle, the soft echo filling the room. “We haven’t got a choice here, Randal. We must do the best we can.”

I went back to Pelican the next morning. I bought the best security system our money could afford. “Lethal or non-lethal,” Pelican asked me.

“Whichever you’ve got,” I told him. “As long as I can walk away with it today and have it installed by nightfall.” He gave me a queer look and a price, and I gave him the money. It took the better part of a day to get the workshop straightened out and the new locks installed, repairing the door and barricading the windows with steel bars and old workbenches I bolted into place. I spent the afternoon installing Pelican’s toys: taser banks and motion detectors; thick Kevlar sheets that sat over the doorjamb, securing it against gunfire and battering shoulders; voltage packs that would pass a charge through anything metal that was tampered with on the exterior of the workshop, leaving a claw blackened and the man behind it stunned. Jackson was upstairs while I toiled below; he checked his work on Rose’s prosthetic tongue.

I finished the security job after sunset, just in time for the first Corvidae’s croaky laughter to echo at the end of our alleyway. Jackson came down as I was making dinner, flinching at the distant laughter outside. “Done,” he said, wiping his hands on a rag. His blue, worn overalls stained with patches of rust. “She can talk.”

“Can she eat?” I ladled soup into a bowl and pushed it towards him, then filled a second when Jackson nodded. I started limping towards the stairs, bowl on a plastic tray.

“She’s probably sleeping,” Jackson said. “And she’ll be groggy, even if she’s not. Make sure she doesn’t choke, Randal – she’ll need some practice before she’s used to swallowing with the prosthetic.”

The whole gang arrived while I was climbing the stairs, loud caws and laughter shrill in the alleyway. I ignored them and kept climbing, opened the door to Rose’s room. She wasn’t sleeping, but her eyes were glassy from Jackson’s painkillers. She was insulated by the drugs, able to look into my face without flinching. She seemed numb to the point where even the noise outside was absent. I sat down next to her and she smiled at me, wincing. “Randal,” she said. Her new tongue stumbled around the name, blunting the n, but I could recognise the word through the awkwardness. “Your name is Randal.”

“I brought you food,” I said. “Something soft. Soup. Jackson wants you to practice swallowing.”

“I can hear birds,” she said. Her face turned towards the window, towards the aftermath of sunset lingering behind the skyline. The song of the Corvidae filled the air.

“Nothing to worry about.” I tried to look her in the eye. “You should eat.”

I held a spoon before her face, the soup steaming and thick. I watched the patchwork plastic and Kevlar move when she opened her mouth, the faint flicker at the base of her throat as Jackson’s prosthetic worked with the torn scraps of her real tongue. Jackson was right – it was ugly work, but Rose remained beautiful. I fed her a spoon at a time, using my good hand to guide the spoon. The crow calls grew louder, cutting through the groggy haze. She stopped eating and turned to the window, shuddering.

“It’s them.” She said. “They… hated me. They told me to leave. Why are they here?”

“No-one likes to lose,” I said.

She blinked back tears, remembering. “Why am I here? Why aren’t I dead?”

I thought of Jackson, sitting downstairs, working his way through a bowl of soup. “Jackson likes old stories,” I told her, and she frowned. “Fairytales and stuff. You needed help and he helped you.” I clenched my fist, listening to the gears creak. “He does that, sometimes.”

The painkillers kicked in, responding to her stress. She drifted off, unable to fight Jackson’s drugs, and I went downstairs to listen to the bird calls. Jackson was by the stove again, hidden in the corner of the workshop. He cradled a half-full bowl of soup in his lap. The Corvidae were right outside now. I turned the lights off, one by one, relying on the shadows to give us some cover.

“She’s scared,” I said, settling into the stool next to him.

“She’s a smart girl,” Jackson answered. He lowered his head and stared into the murkiness of the soup, wispy hair falling in front of his face. Something thumped hard against the front door and the charge went off, filling the air with ozone. We listened to something young and birdlike squeal in pain, then the sound of a limping body retreating into the distance. “We should have closed-circuit,” Jackson said. “I don’t like hearing them without seeing what they’re up to.” The second thump was more solid, prepared for the shock that followed. The sound echoed across the workshop as the taser’s hiss cut through the darkness.

“Pelican didn’t have any cameras,” I said. “It’d take at least a week to get some in.”

Jackson slept in his chair, fitful, flinching with every measured assault against our doorway. I stayed awake, keeping vigil, the poker gripped in the clockwork hand. My slow hand, the hated hand, but it was strong enough to shatter bone if I could land a solid blow. Jackson used to tell me stories about a broken boy who was put back together by kindly elves with a talent for magic and clockwork. He would tell me the boy’s arm was magical, that his heart was a wonder in a world where hearts rarely beat, where all too often hearts were lost for no reason. Love was a powerful thing in Jackson’s stories. It could conquer armies and rewrite time. It could make the broken whole again.

I passed the time by counting the thumps of Corvidae against the door, the rattle-rattle-buzz of claws against the window bars, the electrified charge sending bodies reeling back with scorched hands and strangled cries. They paced themselves, syncopated the assaults, used the silence as a weapon to keep us on edge. I counted the thumps, one after the other; one bird, two birds, three birds burned. Four birds, five birds, six birds harmed. Occasionally I stood by the doorway, listening to the quiet scuffle of clawed boots against the concrete. Sometimes they were swift and raucous, using the echoes of the alley to their advantage. They filled the air with birdcalls, making it impossible to be sure of their numbers. Other times they were silent, murmurs in the darkness. I figured there were twenty three of them out there, including those who’d been shocked by the taser bank on the door, birds shocked by enough voltage to leave them twitching and stunned until morning. Sometimes I pressed my weight against the door, keeping it steady against the assault.

Around 2 a.m. it all went quiet. I listened to the steps of someone loping up to the doorway, leaning in without touching it. “We know you’re in there, Tick-Tock,” Rook3 whispered. “Me-and-I hear your heart; tick-tick-tick.”

“No-one here but us chickens,” I told him, voice cracking. I picked a spot by the door, raising the poker high, just in case. “Bars on the windows and steel plates on the doors. Go bother someone else, little bird.”

Rook3 knocked, three sharp raps that echoed on the steel. The air filled with a whiff of ozone and Rook3 screamed, then cawed and cackled as his screams turned to laughter. “Nothing save you from me-and-I, Tick-Tock,” he said. “You come out, sun or no-sun, and Rook3 be waiting.”

There was no more knocking after that, no more electrical discharge or rattled windows to break the silence. Later, as the sun rose, I peeked through a crack on a second-floor window and watched the Corvidae perched on the fire-escape next door, waiting and watching like an army of twisted shadows. I woke Jackson and pointed. “We’re locked in,” I said. “It appears they’re laying siege.”

Cops are an expensive proposition in Downside, but Jackson tried calling them anyway. His first attempt got him a busy signal, the second just the hazy buzz of a scrambler attached to the line. The third call was answered by Rook3’s croaking laughter. “Nobody going to help you, Patch. You goin’ to die if you don’t give me-and-I back da girl.” Jackson hung up. His knuckles were pale and his hands trembled, but he drew himself straight as he glared at the door. Defiant, angry, but that wouldn’t last. I could see the fear there, lurking behind his eyes.

“We should go,” I told him. “Use the tunnel, get out while we can.” Jackson didn’t answer. He went back to his chair and rocked, his face pinched so tight I could barely see his eyes beneath the press of wrinkles. Small, gentle Jackson, determined to do what was right. “So many of them,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting there to be so many.”

I left him there, huddled against the darkness, and checked on Rose myself.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Rose told me, fighting against the painkillers. “All the noise, it was like being back there. Like living with them.” She was still weak, barely able to lift her head off the pillow, but there was life in her cheeks. She winced with every s she used, a sting of pain from the sutures as the tongue touched her teeth. It gave her voice an old lilt, at odds with the face full of bruises and patchwork stitches. So many grafts, so many repairs.

“No-one slept,” I said. “Don’t worry, they can’t hurt you here. We’ve locked the place up tight, and we’ve held off worse than this.”

Rose pursed her lips and frowned at me, the patchwork tongue bulging against her cheeks. It was a little too large for her mouth, the mechanism heavy against her jaw. She would never look right with her mouth closed, but at least she could speak.

“How…” She shook her head, trying to dislodge the question, but her hand reached out anyway. The dark nails and fingers withered into claws, hovering over the steel, preparing to stroke it. I pulled away, the cogs grinding.

“Jackson found me when I was a kid,” I said. “Beaten, cut up, almost dead. He put me back together, the same as you. Replaced the parts as I grew older so I didn’t get lopsided.” I raised the arm and looked at it, flexed my fingers and took her withered claw in mine. “He’s a good man. Foolish, really, and stubborn, but a good man nonetheless.”

Outside there was a loud caw, the fizzing snap of a rock thrown against the windows. Rose flinched. “You never… there are other options,” she said. “You could get it replaced.”

I shook my head. “Jackson calls it his finest work,” I told her. “The arm, the heart, the knee. Replacing them would break his heart.”

I stood there until Rose gave in to the painkillers, drifting off into sleep with a frown across her face. I held her hand, studied her scars, wondered how far she could make it. Jackson was wrong; we could move her if we had too. Slowly, using a gurney, with enough drugs to keep her sedated and free of pain. We could run if we had to, but we might not get away. The tunnel could get us out, but they would have someone watching. Just in case we had allies, on the off chance someone heard the noise and could be bothered to investigate. If we were spotted as we left, if they saw us sneaking out…

I went downstairs. Jackson was huddled in his chair, shaking. “They won’t stop,” Jackson said. “They’ll never leave us alone, Randal. They just won’t stop.”

“Then we run,” I told him, and I laid out the plan. Jackson listened, eyes flat, and nodded when I reached the end. I sent him upstairs to get things ready. When I was alone in the workshop I let myself shake, skin crawling against the prosthetics. I tightened my grip on the poker, steel grinding against steel. My heart tick-tocked, slow and steady, heedless of my fear.

The Corvidae left us alone during the day, disappearing into the shadows or lingering in knots of two or three, hanging on the fire escapes like birds on a wire. I spent the afternoon taking practice swings with the poker, trying to get comfortable with its leverage and its weight. Violence is easy to practice: swing, parry, thrust; make use of my longer reach. Don’t let them get close enough to use speed against me, try to take them down before they rip me apart with their claws. Jackson watched me, lips drawn, trying not to state the obvious.

“You’ll need food,” he said. “Sooner or later, you’ll run out of food.”

“I won’t run out of food,” I said. “And you’ll need it more than I do.” I smiled at him, awkward and lopsided. Jackson hugged me and patted my arm.

“It’ll be dark soon,” I said. “You should get ready.”

“Sit,” Jackson said, and he waited until I did. He told me a story. “It’s easier,” he said, in the silence at the end. The shadows inside the workshop were growing longer and darker. “In the stories, it’s always easier.”

“We should get her ready to move,” I said. “You’ll need help with the gurney, for the first part at least.

This time the bird calls started right on sunset, a whole murder of Corvidae starting their mockery at once. I sent Jackson upstairs with two bowls of soup and a pair of spoons, keeping up appearances in case their spies had an angle to see into the house. He pretended he was weary, stomping as he climbed the stairs. He snuck back down quietly, taking each stair with a graceful limp. The wood didn’t squeak beneath him, and perhaps the ruse was pointless at this late hour; the plan would work or it wouldn’t, whether we maintained the ruse or not. He nodded at me, eyes shining. We turned out the lights.

“Tick-Tock,” Rook3 said, calling through the door. “Hey, Tick-Tock? We-and-I getting bored. We be cracking your cage tonight.” I heard the regular chk-chk-chk of the taser discharge, the sharp squeal of nails against the metal bars over the window. “Insulated, Tick-Tock,” Rook3 taunted. “Me-and-I saw your little friend, saw the fat little Pelican. Got me what I need to break down your little toys.” He knocked on the door again; rap-rap-rap. This time it wasn’t followed by a scream.

I heard the door to the tunnel slide shut, the quiet click of a lock settling in place. “Me-and-I eat your eyes tonight, Tick-Tock. Eat your eyes and taste the sweet-meat upstairs, after we gut da patch. He shouldn’a saved her, Tick-Tock.” Chk-chk-chk as the taser spluttered, useless, against the claws sliding over the door. Nails on the metal, sharp squeal like a knife to the gut. The sound drew goosebumps from what flesh I still possessed.

I readied the poker and stood next to the door; if I was lucky I could brain one as he came through, crack his head open like a stale egg and be done with it before the others swarmed. Maybe I could frighten the rest of the pack off, make them think we were dangerous, better equipped than they’d suspected. They struggled with the windows and kicked at the doors, insulated against the taser discharge but still struggling to break down the barricade. It would take time, but not a lot. I waited. I waited, and the minutes ticked by. I thought about Jackson and his stories, about Rose and her mangled tongue, the patchwork scars that will cover her body when the stitches are pulled out and she’s finally healed for good. Jackson was right, she wouldn’t be beautiful, but I was right too. I knew it.

Jackson is in the tunnel now, waiting for his chance to run. I wish that I were with him. I wish that I had kissed Rose, just one more time. I wish so many things.

I can hear the Corvidae outside now, a murder of thugs and runaways, hungry for a fight. They’re almost in. It’s time. I think about Jackson, about his stories. Outside the Corvidae gather, jangling the windows and kicking the door. Four-and-twenty skinny boys, their flesh twisted by drugs and designer mutagens, black claws ready to rend and tear until I’m nothing but blood and parts. I can hear something hissing, see sparks underneath the doorjamb. I hold my breath, waiting for the inevitable. My heart tick-tocks, measuring out the silence. I repeat the same phrase like a mantra, reminding myself why I’m staying: Downside isn’t a place where fairytales happen. I hope I’m wrong. I know I’m right.

The front door slides sideways, hinges and locks worn down by the careful application of a blow torch. The first of the Corvidae comes in, a smaller bird with a nervous tick, his caw humming in the back of his throat. “Tick-Tock,” Rook3 croons, calling through the open doorway. “We coming to get you Tick-Tock.” The smaller bird hasn’t noticed me lurking in the darkness; the clockwork arm steady, the poker raised and ready to strike.

I can buy some time. They’re going to need it. Jackson isn’t fast, and he certainly can’t fight, and the gurney will slow him down even if they don’t spot him the moment he breaks cover. Downside is not a place where fairytales happen, but maybe just this once we can sneak one by.

The Corvidae scout takes a few steps into the room, hunched over and eager. He sniffs the air, cocks his head to one side. He can hear my heart ticking, low and ominous in the darkness.

“Go,” I whisper, “Please Jackson, get away,” and I swing the poker down. It bites into the feathered scalp of Rook3’s scout, sends him sprawling to the floor in a pile of blood and skewed limbs. My heart beats steadily, no adrenaline can speed it up. Steadily like a clock, dependable and slow. Jackson isn’t fast, but he’s always been faster than me. I can hear Rook3’s keening, the murder of black figures joining his angry scream. They surge, a dark cloud of anger. I think I can hear my pulse, roaring in my ears. I raise the poker. I wait for them. This is not a place for chivalry, but I can pretend I’m a champion. I can stand against the tide, for a few moments at least. I can buy time for Jackson and Rose. I can. She is not a princess, but she deserves this chance. My kiss did not wake her, but she can still be saved. She deserves this. She does. I hope I’m right.

My pulse rattles in my ears as they swarm in, swarm over me, clawing, slashing; Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-

Peter M. Ball is a writer from Brisbane, Australia, whose work has appeared in Fantasy Magazine and the Dreaming Again anthology. He attended the Clarion South workshop in 2007 and he’s currently trying to break the habit of being a perpetual post-grad student. He can found online at www.petermball.com.

As I walked the heat-cracked sidewalk in front of Seanna’s house, she surprised me by blowing a kiss from her bedroom window–a kiss I knew she’d never actually give. Even though I was mad at her mother for forbidding Seanna from seeing me, I blew a kiss back, only to have her mother evil-eye me from their garden. I ignored the look and kept walking. Seanna’s Mom had hated me ever since I’d held her daughter’s hand last month. Never mind that Seanna and I had both been wearing gloves at the time, meaning I hadn’t technically touched her skin.

When Dad heard of me holding hands, he’d stayed calm and muttered about raging teenage hormones. But to be prudent, the next morning he drove me to the town’s pharmacy, where the Doc doubled my weekly dose of inhibitor. “Better safe than stiff,” Dad said with a smirk.

But I didn’t have time to worry about Seanna or her mom or even my dad’s lame sexual innuendos; the sun was setting and it wasn’t safe to stay out after dark.

Seanna’s was the last maintained house on the block. Just down from the street pine trees and kudzu sprawled across abandoned lawns and burned-out homes. Amid all this green lay the ruins of Brad’s house. The old swing set we’d played on as kids was tipped over in the corner of the front yard, the reds and blues of its molded polymers faded away and small pines growing through the frame. The clubhouse we built in the oak tree hung half rotten, the tree itself almost buried in a sea of kudzu vines. I sneaked around to the backyard, where the grass looked like prairie and the second story windows broken by last year’s hail storm still hadn’t been replaced.

The only place the weeds and kudzu and pines hadn’t invaded was the small well-trimmed spot in the middle of the backyard where a single thorn tree grew.

The lights were on in Brad’s house and I watched his father’s silhouette pace around the living room. I figured he was too drunk to notice me, but when I tried sneaking into the yard Brad’s old German Shepard barked and chased me back out. But then the dog recognized me. “Sarge?” I whispered. Sarge padded over and whined as he licked my face. He then walked back to the thorn tree and lay down under its scraggy branches.

I sneaked across the yard and crouched behind the thorn tree. The tree–two meters tall, with silver branches and needles crooking left and right like frozen lightning–was sickly and dangerously thin. When I pulled off my gloves and grabbed a needle, it shattered with a musical chime. Sarge whined from the dusty groove beside the tree trunk, where he obviously spent most of his time.

Being more careful, I pushed my index finger onto another needle. A drop of blood ran into the needle, as cold rushed through my veins.

“Hello Miles,” Brad said, emerging from the fog of too much time alone. “Do I even want to know how long it’s been since your last visit?”

“Two months,” I said, feeling both guilty and relieved that Brad still seemed so fresh. Too often thorns’ memories and personalities stiffened and decayed if they were left alone for long periods of time.

Brad laughed at my guilt and relief, the same high-pitched cackle he’d used when we were kids. Not, of course, that I actually heard him. When talking to thorns, it was best to keep your eyes closed. That way your mind turned the thoughts and feeling to words. With eyes closed, the person might almost be sitting next to you.

Almost.

“So what made you finally visit?” Brad asked.

I started to make up some excuse, but it’s pointless to lie to a thorn. Brad knew I hated seeing him in this situation. “Elleen was mad at me,” I finally confessed. “Wouldn’t speak to me unless I checked on you.”

Brad smiled. No one really cared for him anymore. His mother moved away last year–wanting to be near the safety of a big city–and his father drank too much and barely got by. “He only talks to me when he’s almost comatose. I can taste the alcohol in his blood. Never tells me about his life; just jabs his hand over and over on my needles.”

For a moment I opened my eyes and glanced at the living room window where Brad’s father sat drinking a beer. As I shifted, the needle in my finger broke. I pulled the tip out of my skin and found another needle to impale myself on. “You’re really brittle,” I said.

“The water was cut off a while back. Dad can’t pay the bill.”

I cursed. I should have checked on him before this, what with the drought we’ve been having. I told Brad to wait, then grabbed an old bucket and sneaked back to Seanna’s house. Seanna’s Mom was inside but the sprinkler in her garden still ran. I filled the bucket and returned to Brad, flooding his roots. Sarge whined and climbed out of his hole; before the water washed in I thought I saw the glint of bones there, but I refused to look close enough to find out.

I made several more trips before Brad had enough water, then stabbed my finger again. Even though the sun was setting and I needed to get home, I opened my memories to the story Elleen had created just for Brad, a haunted tale of lovers kept from one another by cruel fate. Brad cried in my mind as he listened. Even though I’d heard many of Elleen’s stories, this was her best yet. When I was done, Brad thanked me and said to give his best to Elleen.

When I reached home, I wanted to tell Elleen how much Brad had loved the story. However, it was already nighttime and shrieks and perverse giggles rose from the fields behind our house. Not daring to find out what waited in that dark, I rushed inside and locked the door behind me.

* * *

The next day I worked with my dad, tossing bags of mulch and manure off the back of our flatbed truck as the sun climbed hot into the sky. We were landscaping the memorial grove in the rich part of town. Even though it was still morning, the heat swamped me as I sweated through my long-sleeve shirt and gloves. I’d strip them off in a second if we were home. But people in this part of town would freak if I showed skin and Dad might lose this job. Couldn’t risk that with work so hard to come by.

After I’d finished unloading, my dad patted me on the back–a rare touch, even in his gloves–and told me to work on the trees in this area. He’d drive to the other side of the grove and deal with matters there. I nodded knowingly. Mrs. Blondheim, the fanatical town matriarch whose money maintained this grove, had complained about two new trees from thorn die, who’d sneaked into the park last week. She wanted them removed. I hated killing thorn trees, so my father always handled that chore.

After my Dad had driven off, I added the mulch around the tree trunks and dragged fresh bags deeper into the grove until I couldn’t see anything except the glow of hundreds of silver trunks and branches and thorns. All the trees were at their full growth of two meters, a height they’d achieved in the explosion of growth right after death. Near the center of the grove, I accidentally brushed against an old tree and a thorn stabbed through my shirt. Jackie, a cute-faced nine-year-old who’d turned thorn several decades ago, said hello. The fogginess of her thoughts told me no one had talked to her in years. Not wanting to be rude, I held my bleeding arm against her long enough to say hello back.

“Have you seen my doll anywhere?” she asked. “Mom gave it to me on her last visit. She’ll be mad if I’ve lost it.”

I didn’t know what to say. How do you explain to a child who can’t grow up, or even change, that her mother was long dead? That the doll had existed only in her mother’s mind and, with her mother gone, there’s no way to find it. Because of the thorn connection, for the briefest of moments Jackie seemed to understand what I was thinking. “My mother’s not dead,” she cried, before the built up static of a hundred years returned her to the fresh-faced nine-year-old she’d been moments before. “Have you seen my doll?” she asked as innocently as before.

“No,” I told her gently. “But I’ll keep an eye out.” I then pulled my arm away and wiped off the blood before returning to work.

At lunchtime, I sat down in the middle of the grove and ate my sandwich. The wind blew through the silver trees to the sound of a thousand begging whispers, but I resisted the urge to talk to any of them. I thought about visiting Mom’s tree, but decided to wait until I was off work in case Mrs. Blondheim came by. Mom turned thorn when I was nine. Even though we hadn’t the money to put her in a fancy grove like this, the thought of Mom growing here had obsessed me. Dad tried to tell me that Mom was dead; that her thorn tree was merely an echo of Mom’s soul. But I begged him for days without stopping until he made a deal with Mrs. Blondheim, trading a cut in his pay in return for her taking Mom’s tree. At the time I’d been thrilled. Now, I wondered if I’d done the right thing.

I also wondered about the people who’d created the phage responsible for all this. A few fanatics like Mrs. Blondheim still praised the gened virus’s creators for giving beauty and eternal life to our world. Most, though, cursed them as simple enviro terrorists. Whatever the intention, the phage had removed the most basic aspect of human culture–touch. Almost 90% of humanity carried the phage, but it was only activated if you touched someone with the same phage combination. Since the phage continually changed versions like a madly spinning lock, the odds that touching any one person would turn you thorn were not extremely high. However, a person you could safely touch one day might be untouchable the next.

I thought about Seanna. Despite the treatments my father gave me, I wanted so badly to touch her. To hold her. To kiss her. If we married, maybe we could afford to be tested to find a safe day or two in which to touch. If she bore my child, it would be safe for her to touch the baby as long as she breast fed the child and shared the same phage combinations, but I wouldn’t be allowed such tenderness. Maybe someday my child and I could be tested so we could share a hug like my father and I had done after Mom died. But as I constructed my life to come, I shook my head. The people who had made this curse deserved the worst hell humanity could ever create.

Maybe that had been their intention.

* * *

I finished my work by four and drove home with Dad, trying not to notice the crystalline dust coating his pants. He hated killing thorns and would probably retire to the living room tonight to watch old movies and drink whiskey.

After dinner, I checked the solar panels on the roof and the batteries in the basement, then reset the motion detectors and fluorescents. Once everything checked okay, and with darkness still an hour away, I figured I had enough time to visit Elleen. I grabbed my shotgun and told Dad I’d be back by sunset.

Elleen grew at the far end of our land, just past the corn and wheat fields. Unlike most thorn trees, her crystalline limbs shone with a faint blue hue. While Elleen and I had been friends since childhood, I’d only gotten to know her after she and Brad had run away at age thirteen. Brad had returned nine months later, infected and nearing his end. No one knew where Elleen was until I found her tree growing on our property. She later told me she’d been trying to reach Brad when her guts exploded and she fell to the dirt, screaming and begging for more time.

I sat beneath Elleen’s limbs, closed my eyes, and eased my palm onto a thorn. She suddenly appeared beside me, smiling, then leaned over and hugged me. While I knew the forbidden touch existed only in my mind, I still shivered with excitement. I was also amazed at how clear the connection with Elleen was. She rarely showed the fogginess most thorns fell into after a few hours alone. Even my father, who refused to talk to any thorns–including Mom–had said hello to Elleen once, remarking later that she was indeed different. He’d also noticed that a few of Elleen’s thorns still appeared to be growing, something most thorn trees stopped doing shortly after their first burst of creation.

“How’s Brad?” she asked.

I opened my memories of Brad. Elleen frowned when she saw that Brad’s father hadn’t been watering him. To survive, thorn trees needed more water than ordinary trees. Since the drought began I’d hauled water to Elleen twice a week.

“It’s my fault,” I stammered. “I didn’t know his father would get his water cut off. But I’ll stop by and water him from now on.”

Elleen thanked me. “Anything new with Seanna?” she asked.

“She blew a kiss at me today. But her mom’s still mad at me for holding her gloved hand.”

Elleen laughed. “That’ll make Seanna want you even more. Nothing turns a girl on like a bad boy.”

I started to question whether Elleen was the best one to give advice about a ‘bad boy’ since Brad had turned her thorn, but I liked Elleen too much to say that. Of course, since our emotions and thoughts were coursing as one through my veins, she knew what I was thinking almost before I did. She laughed, then cocked her head sidewise in my mind. “For what it’s worth, Mr. Miles Stanton, you’re too nice a guy to ever be bad. But it’ll still help if Seanna sees you as forbidden fruit. Not that what you feel for her is anything more than base horniness and minor infatuation.”

I sighed. It was pointless to argue with her over what I felt, or didn’t feel, toward Seanna, because Elleen would simply say she saw my motives with more clarity than I could ever muster. Still, it irritated for Elleen to dismiss so easily my love for Seanna.

Elleen and I then talked about her story and Brad’s reaction to it. Back in school, Elleen had been the best writer around, with some of her romances picked up by the larger net zines. She still created stories, but now Brad and I were her entire audience. I’d once tried to write the stories down, but the pictures she crafted in my head refused to match any words I knew.

I asked Elleen if she had any new stories; in response, she sang a beautiful tale of a princess lost in a big city. But halfway through the story, just as the princess was about to find the magic key to take her home, Elleen stopped. “Someone’s near us,” she whispered in panic.

I tried to wake up, but Elleen’s thorn trance was so strong I couldn’t wake. Suddenly, Elleen’s trunk vibrated and the thorn in my palm shattered. I fell back into the dirt with a start. When I looked up, the sky above was dark except for a few moon-lit clouds scudding by. I jumped up, afraid.

The only people out at night were thorn die.

Elleen’s limbs and trunk glowed with the slightest of bioluminescence. I cursed softly, grabbing my shotgun off the ground as I wished I’d brought my full-spectrum flashlight. It wouldn’t stop determined thorn die, but it might scare them. Being killed rarely scared thorn die; pain usually did.

I edged away from Elleen until I reached the dirt road. The road ran between my father’s fields and the scrub forest that’d grown up on the abandoned suburban lands. Perfect place for an ambush. Still, I had no choice. I ran down the road as quickly and quietly as I could.

I saw the porch lights of home, saw my father standing outside looking for me, and I started to relax. Suddenly three people stepped from the dark shadow beneath a tree. I turned to run, but more people surrounded me.

I aimed the shotgun at a woman standing in front of me. She was half-naked, her breasts showing the faint glowing streaks of the infection snaking through her body. “Hold me,” she moaned seductively before laughing. One of the men next to her giggled and hugged the woman; he was naked, as were most of the others around me. The phage drove thorn die almost insane with a desire to touch other people. But what made the man stand out were the tattoos of numbers across his chest and arms. Prime numbers and base pairs; quadratic equations and Einstein’s famous e=mc2. The tattoo’s dyes had attracted the phage infection so the numbers glowed faintly as he moved.

I had never seen this many thorn die at once, and I aimed the shotgun from one to the next. If I shot one, the others would be on me before I could pump another shell into the chamber. One of the thorn die reached for me, but the tattooed number man pulled him back.

“My apology,” the number man said. “The phage screams at us during end stage, especially around uninfected like you.”

I nodded in false sympathy. “I understand. Now if you’ll just get out of my way . . .”

The group tightened around me. “First, I’m curious about the thorn tree you were talking to a few moments ago,” the man said.

“She’s a friend. I take care of her.”

That obviously wasn’t what the numbered man wanted to know. But before he could be more specific, the half-naked woman beside him jumped at me. I fired the shotgun at her chest, seeing an afterimage of blood and glowing tissue imploding as the numbered man screamed and tried in vein to stop the other thorn die from attacking me. I knocked one thorn die away with the gun’s butt, dodged another and started to run when someone grabbed my right leg. I stumbled to the ground, trying to pump the next round into the chamber, but the others were almost on me.

Suddenly a shotgun blast rent the air, then another, then a third. I rolled over to find my father shooting the thorn die. I grabbed my own shotgun and crawled over to him. By the time I’d pumped in a new shell, the remaining thorn die were gone, my last glimpse being of the number man as he bolted through the darkness. The shot ones screamed on the ground as their torn bodies raced to take root before death.

“Come on,” Dad yelled as he grabbed my arm and dragged me to the house. “There’re too many of them.”

We ran as fast as we could, still hearing the yelling and screaming even after we’d bolted the front door. Once my father had made sure the thorn die weren’t attacking the house, he grabbed my face in his ungloved hands and asked if I was okay. “Did they touch you? Did their blood splatter on you?”

I shook my head, shocked at my father touching me for only the second time in my life. He asked again if they’d touched me, but all I could think about was how warm his flesh felt on mine. I tried to remember if any of the thorn die had touched me. The one who’d grabbed me had only gotten a hold of my pants and boots. And I couldn’t see any of their blood on me. But maybe someone had touched me. I couldn’t be sure.

Dad hugged me tightly and mumbled a prayer, as he picked up his shotgun. “I’ll stand first watch,” he said.

Outside, the screaming continued as the wounded thorn die rooted their damned bodies to the ground.

* * *

The sun rose silently, the wounded thorn die having truly died, the phage rebuilding their bodies into silicon and cellulous. Now that the sun was up, the thorn seedlings would grow quickly, reach their full height within days as their bodies and the sunlight were absorbed by a matrix a hundred times as efficient as a leafy plant’s chlorophyll. As I walked around our house, I wondered where the other thorn die had holed up. Once you were infected with an active phage, exposure to the sun sped up the painful change, which was why thorn die avoided sunlight and houses equipped with full-spectrum spotlights.

Dad was hung-over from drinking too much last night. He also felt guilty about being too drunk to realize I hadn’t come back by dark, and worried that I’d gotten an active phage from either the thorn die or his own touch. He opened our safe and took out all the money we had saved.

We drove downtown to the pharmacy, where Dad explained what had happened. The Doc seemed sympathetic. “You need to tell the sheriff about this,” she said, as she took the money from Dad’s gloved hand and counted it. I knew we didn’t have enough for a single test, let alone two. But to my surprise the Doc handed back some of the money and told me to step over for my blood sample. Dad wasn’t getting a test, even though he’d touched me. I protested, but the doc whispered to me to shut up and act like a man. “Odds are, you’ll have the same results,” she said.

The test took four hours to run, so Dad and I walked down to the sheriff’s office. Sheriff Alice Koffee said she’d heard reports of several large thorn die groups moving through the area. “There have been a few reports like this over the last few months,” she said. “Groups of thorn die move through an area and attack any memorial groves they find. Evidently they’ve been undergoing some type of revival-like movement which preaches that memorial groves are sinful, but it’s difficult to get specifics on what they’re up to.”

The sheriff suggested we move closer to town until this passed, but Dad said we’d be fine. We then drove uptown and landscaped the memorial grove until noon, then drove back to the pharmacy. I tried to stay calm while we waited for the Doc, but my guts clenched and I could barely breathe. When she told me I was fine, my body shook so hard Dad had to help me stand out of my chair.

Figuring that I needed some time alone, Dad said he’d finish landscaping the grove. I drove over to Seanna’s house, needing to talk to someone, but her mother eyed me suspiciously and said she’d gone shopping. I then drove home. I could see the thorn die bodies near the fields. They looked like shrunken mummies, each desiccated body centered on a half-meter nub of silver reaching for the sun.

Still needing to talk, I walked over to Elleen, but words were worthless for what I’d found. Elleen’s truck was severed, almost all her limbs and thorns destroyed. A single limb remained, attached to a bare sliver of trunk half-dug out of the ground.

Crouching beside her, I gingerly pressed a finger to one of her remaining thorns. She appeared in my mind–hazy, delirious, but alive. At first she couldn’t remember who I was, but then she accessed her memories in her remaining branch and smiled at me. She said the thorn die had attacked her last night; that they’d broken her apart piece by piece, as they giggled and impaled themselves on her needles.

I ran home and returned with my work tools. I carefully dug up Elleen’s roots, the shovel cracking through her sun bleached bones. I then wrapped her roots in a wet burlap sack and carried her to our greenhouse.

* * *

I fussed over Elleen for the rest of the day, and Dad joined me when he arrived home. We placed her under the grow lights in the greenhouse behind our house, soaked her in nutrient rich soil, did everything to keep her from dying. Dad figured it was touch and go but said she might pull through.

“It’s weird, the thorn die doing this,” he said later, as we sat on the porch watching the sun set. I held my shotgun, while an automatic rifle I’d never seen before rested on Dad’s lap. “And I don’t understand why they’re attacking the memorial groves. I mean, they’ll all be trees in a few weeks or months. Why attack their own?”

Dad said that as he’d left town, the sheriff and fire departments were preparing for the worst and had called up their auxiliary officers. The National Guard was also out.

But Dad and I didn’t get hit that night. On the horizon, we saw fires in the direction of town and heard a number of gunshots. If the phones and general nets had still been up, we’d have known what was happening. But they’d been gone for the last decade in this part of the state and the security nets were so overloaded we couldn’t log on, so we sat on the porch all night long, slapping mosquitoes and waiting for first light.

The next morning the smell of smoke strangled the air, as Dad and I drove to town. We first rode through the outlying subdivisions so I could check on Seanna. We found hers and Brad’s houses burned to the ground. There was no sign of Seanna and her family, but one of their neighbors said Seanna and her mother had been hurt and were in the hospital downtown. When I walked next door to Brad’s house, I found his father’s charred body in what had been the living room. Brad’s old German Sheppard, Sarge, lay dead near the body, as if he’d been trying to protect his master.

Out back, Brad’s tree looked like it had survived. But when I touched a thorn to give Brad the bad news, the crystalline structure shattered to shards. Dad shook his head and said the fire’s heat must have killed Brad, too.

While I cried, Dad patted me on the shoulder with his gloved hand. I understood that even with Brad’s death it wasn’t worth us risking another touch.

We buried Brad’s father and Sarge beside Brad and I said a few words, telling Brad how much I’d miss him, how much Elleen loved him. We then drove to town. Burned barricades blocked most of the roads, with dozens of thorn die bodies lying around, some trying to root into the asphalt of Main Street. The National Guard still manned the barricades and Dad didn’t think we’d be let in, but to our surprise a weary sergeant told us to go straight to the sheriff’s office.

Turned out the thorn die attack on the barricades and houses, no matter how bloody, had only been a diversion. A larger group attacked the town’s memorial groves, smashing machetes and axes through the silver trees. Two groves in the poorer, outlying parts of town were totally destroyed, every tree missing branches and thorns, while the rich memorial grove Dad and I worked on had been partially damaged. We found the Sheriff near several of the grove’s oldest thorn trees, all of whom were Blondheim relatives. The old trees had half their branches hacked off.

“Hundreds of them attacked the grove,” Sheriff Koffee said, “led by some thorn die named Chance with glowing number tattoos on his skin. Security nets say he used to be a math professor before the last universities shut down. Anyway, we beat them off before they torched the whole grove, but instead of being content at that Mrs. Blondheim’s been screaming at me all morning for not doing more.”

At the mention of the thorn die with the tattoos, I told Sheriff Koffee that he’d also attacked me, but she was distracted by the return of Mrs. Blondheim, who yelled at my Dad to save her trees. We inspected them. Several were obviously goners, while a handful might be saved with quick action. I started to tell Mrs. Blondheim that no matter what we did the trees had already lost any memories stored in their severed branches, but a stern look from Dad made me hush. I looked around the now unrecognizable grove, located Mom’s tree, and went to talk with her while Dad and the Sheriff hashed things out with Mrs. Blondheim.

Mom was happy to see me, but then she was always happy now that she was a thorn. I told her about Elleen and the grove being attacked, and how Brad and his father were dead, at which point I broke down and cried. Mom held me tightly and told me to hush, that everything would be all right. She talked just like I was a child suffering from a terrible nightmare.

However, once I finished crying, Mom quickly grew confused at my pain—confusion which meant she’d already forgotten everything I’d told her. She asked how Brad and Elleen were doing. As I stared at her deep-beautiful blue eyes, I saw myself reflected back as the child she’d known before she turned. To Mom, I’d never grow up because she couldn’t change, her memories and soul burned hard and static and unbending into the tree’s crystal structure. No matter what I did in life, Mom would forever be the same person as when she died.

Even though I hated to lie, I couldn’t stomach telling her about Brad and Elleen again.

“They’re fine,” I said.

“That’s good,” she said with a final hug. “Every one needs best friends.”

* * *

Dad and I spent the rest of the day shoring up injured trees in the grove. By lunchtime, a large crowd of townsfolk had gathered, with people checking on the trees of relatives and friends or trying to help me and Dad. A National Guard Captain stopped by at one point and almost started a riot when he suggested people pull back to the center of town tonight–where it’d be easier to protect against the next attack–instead of defending the memorial grove. Several townsfolk actually pulled guns on the Captain until Sheriff Koffee calmed things down by saying we’d defend everyone in town, including the thorn trees.

When dusk was a few hours away, Dad loaded our tools in the truck and said we needed to get going. Sheriff Koffee urged us to stay in town, offering to let us room in her house. Dad thanked her but said we’d be fine at home.

As we drove away we passed neighbors and friends preparing to defend the town and the memorial grove. I felt so ashamed at leaving that I sank down in the seat to hide. I asked Dad why we couldn’t stay in town. I wanted to defend Seanna, who was still unconscious in the hospital. I wanted to defend Mom’s tree. I wanted to stand with my neighbors. But Dad said sometimes it was best not to do what everyone else did and left it at that.

* * *

Over the next few days the thorn die attacked the town two more times. Dad and I took turns guarding our house at night. In the morning we drove to town and worked at saving the trees. Sheriff Koffee said the security nets reported attacks on memorial groves in several nearby towns and cities. Once the thorn die had destroyed all the groves in a town, they tended to leave the remaining townsfolk alone.

On the third day I finally was allowed to see Seanna, who was recovering from a nasty hit she’d taken to the head. For once her mother didn’t shoo me away. I blew a kiss at Seanna and told her to get well. Seanna smiled from her hospital bed and reached her bare hand out for me, missing my arm by a hair. Her mother giggled nervously and told me Seanna was still delirious. “She’ll be all right,” she muttered over and over. “She’ll be all right.”

When Dad and I returned home, I ran to the greenhouse to check on Elleen. She looked much better, with a number of needles budding from her trunk and remaining limb. I carefully pricked my palm.

“She’s infected,” Elleen said with a frown.

“What?”

“Seanna. She’s infected. That’s why she tried to grab you.”

I nodded. Obviously, Elleen knew more than I did about how newly infected people acted. I tried to feel sorry for both Seanna and myself at the news, but after all the death and pain of the last few days I couldn’t move past a weary numbness. “How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Better. It’s funny how all that hacking and cutting didn’t hurt. Just left me confused for a bit.”

I smiled. I’d been helping Elleen remember certain things like Brad, giving her some of my own memories to replace what she was missing. Each new memory expanded the buds on her body. Elleen and I also talked about Brad’s burial. She was trying to create words to put on his tombstone. I told her I’d carve the stone once all the craziness calmed down.

Before I left, Elleen mentioned that she’d spoken with Chance, the numbered thorn die who’d hacked her to pieces. “He was extremely sad at hurting me, but said one day I’d understand. He also asked for your forgiveness. I was a little confused by then, but I’m pretty sure he asked for your forgiveness, not mine, even though I was the one being torn apart.”

I asked Elleen why Chance hadn’t finished the job and killed her. Elleen didn’t know. She then told me to be careful. “They’re determined,” she said. “Nothing scarier in the world than a determined person.”

* * *

That night Dad and I sat on the porch. There was only silence from town, the National Guard’s full spectrum spotlights casting a hazy glow above the pines and oaks on the horizon. Dad was sitting quietly, counting his ammunition when we heard a giggle from the darkness before us.

“You don’t want to do this,” Dad yelled. “We ain’t in your way.”

“I agree,” a voice called back, “and I don’t want to do this. But I do want to talk. Will you kill your spotlights?”

I started to say hell no, but Dad waved for me to go do it. I walked in the house and threw the switch for the front spotlights. However, I left the lights shining in the greenhouse out back. I didn’t want these bastards to get near Elleen. I expected Dad to be mad at me for that, but he merely nodded in agreement when I returned to the porch.

As our eyes grew used to the dark, we saw dozens of faintly glowing thorn die standing in the treeline. One thorn die walked forward. He stopped a few meters from the porch, glowing numbers covering his skin.

“You’re Chance, I assume,” Dad said. “You should know I’m pretty mad at what you did to Elleen, and almost did to my son.”

Chance shrugged. “I tried to stop them from attacking your son, but they wouldn’t listen. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about all that. I’m wondering why you two aren’t in town.”

“Not our fight,” Dad said.

“But I’ve seen you working in the memorial grove.”

Dad thought for a moment. “I’m a gardener. I always have been. Helping the trees helps people feel better about those they’ve lost. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to die defending the damn things.”

Chance smiled and clapped his hands. “Exactly. That’s what people miss. Those trees are just an unchanging echo of the person they used to be. Many of us thorn die believe the worst hell we’ll ever experience is being trapped for hundreds of years as we are at the moment we die. Kept like an old photo or video. Only taken out when someone wants to revisit old memories.”

Dad didn’t say anything, but I could see he agreed with Chance’s words.

“What about your wife’s tree?” Chance asked.

Dad bristled at the mention of Mom and shifted the rifle in his hand. “My wife is dead, Mr. Chance. And I don’t appreciate you dredging up our private affairs.”

Chance giggled nervously. “Quite right,” he said. “That’s exactly right. We won’t be bothering you or your son, assuming you stay out of the fight.”

“We’ll still be working in the grove each day,” Dad said.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

Chance thanked Dad and me, then turned and walked back to the treeline. He was already there when I jumped off the porch and ran after him. “Wait,” I yelled. “Why didn’t you kill Elleen?”

Chance turned. In the dark, I couldn’t see his face, only the glowing numbers across his arms and chest. “Because we weren’t trying to kill her,” he said. “We were helping her. None of us are the person we were yesterday–we’re only truly alive as long as we keep growing. And sometimes to grow you must lose something. You, of all people, should understand that.”

I protested, wanting more explanation, but several of the thorn die in the darkness around me giggled in warning. I ran back to the porch, as Chance laughed.

* * *

In the morning I talked with Elleen, telling her everything that Chance had said. Elleen seemed to have improved even more overnight, with dozens of needle buds sprouting and several of her larger needles thickening into small branches. I’d never seen a thorn tree bounce back so quickly from near death, and Elleen blushed at my compliment.

“Chance might be right,” Elleen said. “I feel so alive right now. Like anything is possible.”

However, whatever Dad and I were doing right for Elleen wasn’t working for the trees in the memorial grove. Even though the thorn die hadn’t attacked overnight, several more trees had succumbed to shock from previous injuries. Dad and I worked the best we could, splicing busted limbs and applying nutrients to gashes and cuts, but he told me few of the injured trees would survive. It was almost as if they lacked the will to live. I felt sorry for the dying trees and, when I realized one was the young girl who’d said hello to me the other day, I touched her needles. But her thoughts were so confused and diffuse that there was little consciousness left to comfort.

I spent lunchtime with Mom, telling her about how good Elleen was doing, about what Chance had told us. Of course, Mom forgot my words shortly after I’d spoken them. I wondered if I should do as Chance had and cut off some of Mom’s branches and thorns. Force her to grow new memories and life. But I was too weak; I couldn’t do that to Mom. As she hugged me farewell and said to watch after Dad, someone yanked me off her thorn. I fell back into the sun and stared up at the angry face of Mrs. Blondheim.

“Get back to work,” she yelled. “How dare you waste time when my trees are dying.”

I tried to tell her that the injured trees were going to die no matter what we did because they’d stopped living years ago, but my backtalk only made Mrs. Blondheim angrier. She began hitting me with her cane, telling me to go to work, when Dad and the Sheriff walked up. Dad calmly grabbed Mrs. Blondheim’s cane in mid-air as it was about to strike me again.

“How dare you,” Mrs. Blondheim spat at Dad.

Dad yanked the cane away from her and handed it to the Sheriff. “We’re done here,” he said. “Sheriff, if you need us we’ll be at our house.”

Mrs. Blondheim stared in horror at Dad. “You will get back to work, or I’ll have your wife’s tree dug up. I’ll hack it down like those scum did to the other trees.”

Dad glanced at Mom’s tree, then nodded sadly. “My wife died a long time ago,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do to hurt her.”

He then led me away. Mrs. Blondheim screamed at Sheriff Koffee to arrest us, but the Sheriff ignored her. Other people who’d heard Mrs. Blondheim’s outburst walked away, shaking their heads.

* * *

Two days later, the thorn die attacked the grove a final time. A few townsfolk still fought back, but the Sheriff and the National Guard kept their people away from the grove, instead making their stand between the thorn die and the living part of town. As the Sheriff told us later, there comes a point when you have to decide what’s worth dying for–and for Alice Koffee, the dead weren’t worth any more dying.

The next morning Dad and I walked through the splinters of the memorial grove. We found Mom’s tree missing most of her branches. I tried talking to Mom, to see if she was still inside, fighting for life like Elleen had done, but all I felt was silence. We dug up her bones from beneath the roots and buried her alongside Brad and his father. Dad said Brad’s old backyard would make for a good burial ground. I agreed and drove back to our farm, where I found Elleen’s bones. I carried them back and buried her next to Brad.

I then drove to the hospital. Seanna was in a darkened isolation room. Her mom was talking to Mrs. Blondheim about planting Seanna in the rebuilt memorial grove. I tried to convince Seanna’s mom not to do that, to instead let Seanna out of isolation to enjoy her remaining months of life. “And when she’s dead, don’t let her stay the same. Cut off her branches. Force her to grow and change. She’ll thank you for it one day.”

But Seanna’s mom and Mrs. Blondheim merely looked in horror at my suggestion, as if I’d told them to murder Seanna in her sleep. I started to argue, but realized there were people you didn’t waste time arguing with. So I told Seanna through the isolation door that I loved her, then walked away.

* * *

I finished carving the tombstones the following spring, taking extra care with the letters of Elleen’s tribute to each person. Because she refused to create words for her own bones, I simply wrote the words “A friend” on her burial marker. I could tell she was pleased with that.

Even though the thorn die continued to attack memorial groves across the region, none ever again bothered Elleen. When she was big enough, I planted her beside our porch so I could talk with her every day. Elleen once again glowed a faint blue. And even though I hated the idea of doing so, I promised Elleen that if she ever became stuck in who and what she was, I’d cut off some of her branches and thorns. “Just so you can grow again,” I told her with a smile.

But I didn’t have to worry about that for now. As I sat with my palm on Elleen’s needles, we shivered to the faint chill wind and listened to the crickets humming and watched the stars washing the sky. Feeling bold, I asked Elleen what made her want to live on and on. She laughed and hugged me and kissed me on the lips of my mind until I forgot all about my question and simply kissed her back.

Jason Sanford’s stories have appeared in Year’s Best SF 14, Analog: Science Fiction and Fact, Interzone, The Mississippi Review, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Pindeldyboz, Tales of the Unanticipated, and other places. His stories have won several awards and honors, including a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship and being nominated in the best short fiction category for both the BSFA Award and British Fantasy Award. His website is www.jasonsanford.com.

First appeared in Monstrous

Permuted Press specializes in post-apocalyptic and zombie fiction.

Visit them at http://www.permutedpress.com

Buy Monstrous from the Apex aStore (Amazon).

Dam them. Dam them all to hell.

That’s what I swore I’d do if my new neighbors wouldn’t let my cattle graze on their land. I’d just sell off my livestock, dam the river where it ran through my property, and convert my ranch to a fishery, all while their open fields upriver withered and died. Serve ’em right. If they wanted to make sure that I couldn’t make any money with cattle, well then, I wouldn’t even try.

And damned if they didn’t call my bluff and force my hand. Bastard city-folk, spending their weekends in the country. All that grassland going to waste. They said they liked it better without any “damned smelly cows” stinking up their land. Well, I was sure the selfish fools’d like their land better as dried up hay fields.

It barely took me a day to sell off all of my stock once other nearby breeders and milkers heard the prices I was asking. Two more days and all of my equipment—trucks, milking machines, steroids, fences, even my old cow dog—was on its way to a few enterprising new owners in the next couple of towns. Meanwhile, I used the cash to call in an engineer and a contractor.

You shoulda seen the guys—like kids with a new toy. They’d never dammed a river before, and damned if they weren’t going to do a good job. The neighbors tried to protest as soon as they realized what was going on. Even the other farmers—people I thought’d be on my side—tried to talk me out of it. But I’m a stubborn man. I told them it was my land to do with as I wished, and what I wished now was for them to get the hell off it. Laughed my head off as they drove away, their jaws all clenched and knotted.

The mayor called me down to his office one day, late in the construction. Sitting there in the corner of the hardware store we jokingly called the “city hall,” he begged me to reconsider. I told him there was no way. The river ran through my land and it was mine to do with as I wished. The old fool hemmed and hawed, but I held my ground. Y’know, I bet if I’d lived in a different town they could have gotten a court order to stop me from building the dam. I guess that’s the good thing about living in a hick town in the middle of nowhere—no court.

I got back from the mayor’s office to find my property transformed. That’s the best way I’ve got to describe it. I had to shield my eyes from the glare as I pulled into the driveway. The contractors must’ve completed the final gate on the dam, and the lower pasture was now a huge lake, shimmering in the noon-day sun. God, it was beautiful. The farmhands were all hootin’ and hollerin’, splashing around and diving into the water. Hell, I tore off my boots and dove right in with them.

The next day we installed the hatcheries—huge metal boxes that stuck out into the water like a dock—and I had them seeded with salmon eggs while the neighbors came again to complain. My sons didn’t have much to do at that point, so they entertained themselves by throwing a few people off the property.

As the sun set that evening, I stood on the edge of the lake—my lake—and stared out across the water. Small trout—trapped when the river was dammed—splashed in and out of the water, catching bugs in the evening air. It’d be a few months before the salmon were big enough to harvest, but I knew then that the wait would be worth it. I’d started the whole project out of spite, but deep inside me I knew that this fishery would bring me new prosperity, a new sense of peace, even.

Damned if I wasn’t completely wrong.

I was always kind of harsh on my youngest, Brian, thinking back on things. Ever since his mother died, he’d made it quite clear that he wasn’t interested in farming when he grew up, wanted to go off to school and study dolphins and whales and such. Damn foolishness, I thought. His hatred of farming was a disrespect to me, and I let him know what a disappointment he was to me every chance I got.

God, but I miss him. Brian was the first one to go, three weeks after I put in the dam. He came to me all excited one morning. “Dad,” he said, in his voice that was always too deep for his thin little body, “there’s something in the water.”

Brian was excited, but I was furious. All I needed now was some bear or other big animal to start using my salmon farm as its own private fishing ground. A big, hungry predator could probably wipe out my whole crop in a matter of days. I grabbed my Winchester and followed my son to the new shore line, where he stood, pointing happily to the center of the lake.

And for just a second, I saw it, a huge, dark shape under the water, cresting the surface briefly with its undulating back, then descending again into the depths.

Brian whooped and jumped up and down. He yelled to me, “C’mon, Pop,” or something like that, and ran out onto the flat surface of the hatcheries. “Holy cow, Dad,” he yelled again. “This is incred—”

He never finished that word. It all happened so quick, I just stood there, my mind not really processing what had just happened. One second Brian was there pointing out into the lake, the next second he wasn’t. And in that half a second between, something had come out of the water and grabbed him, and disappeared again so quickly a blink would have missed the whole thing.

I don’t know how long I stood there, staring. Five seconds, ten minutes, an hour, but when it finally registered I screamed, screamed like a man has no right to ever scream. I ran out onto the hatchery where Brian had been standing, the spot marked by a few insignificant splashes of water. I looked out into the lake, saw bubbles rising rapidly to the surface, and raised my rifle. I looked through the scope, searching, searching for the dark shape underneath the surface, my eye sweaty against the gun-sight and my arms shaking so hard I could barely hold the Winchester straight. My stomach had sunk plum down to my shoes.

I was ready to shoot whatever I saw, but then I thought of Brian. He was down there, somewhere. If I fired, wouldn’t I be just as likely to hit him?

Then the blood broke the surface of the water and I fell to my knees and began to cry.

By this time some of the workers had heard my screams and run out to the lake. One of them saw the blood bubbling up to the surface of the water and started puking up his breakfast. My eldest son, Ethan, ran out to my side on the hatcheries, one strong arm grabbing my shaking shoulders while the other picked the rifle up from beside me. “Pop,” he said, me barely listening, “what is it? What’s out th—” Then one of Brian’s red and white checked sneakers floated to the surface, and Ethan’s grip on my shoulders grew tighter and tighter until something inside me popped and the pain pulled me out of my stupor.

I stood and grabbed the Winchester out of Ethan’s hands. I started firing wildly into the water, the pain in my shoulder sending sparks through my vision every time the rifle’s recoil kicked back into me. The water churned and splashed with each shot, and I could see the bubbling trails left by the bullets as they cut their way into the red-tinged water. I couldn’t see the beast, only a dark shadow beneath the surface of the water, but I continued to fire as Ethan yelled beside me.

“Pop! Pop!” he screamed as I fired. “What’s going on? What is that thing? Where’s Bri–”

And then with a rush of damp wind, Ethan, too, was gone.

I dropped the Winchester from numb hands, and it bounced off the hatchery with a metallic clang and sank beneath the surface of the water. On the shore, the farmhands screamed and stumbled over each other as they ran for the safety of dry land. And God damn me to Hell, but I ran, too, ran down the vibrating metal plank, ran with my knees shaking as I hit the ground, ran as tears poured down my face, and didn’t stop running until I was inside my house, cowering in a corner, unable to see anything but the image of Ethan’s face disappearing into the deep waters just a few feet in front of me.

I guess you could say I’ve led a lonely life these past few years, ever since my wife finally succumbed to the cancer. I was bitter and I was mean. If it hadn’t been for my sons, I figure I would have been even worse. And now two of them were gone.

Something snapped in me that morning, while I sat cowering in my bedroom. Something in me went away. When my third son, Joe, came home from school a few hours later and found me, I was still sitting in that corner, but the fear was long gone. It had been replaced by a burning hatred and a need to kill. It was the only feeling I had left.

One of the farmhands must have called the sheriff at some point, and old Buck Bullock was waiting for me when I finally came back out into the light of day. He nodded at me in the quiet way country folk have and extended his hand. “Deeply sorry about your sons,” he said, as we shook, and that was that.

We walked down to the lake, me, Buck and Joe. The workers, what was left of them, hung back from the water, watched us from a distance. The three of us stood on the beach a few feet from the water, looking out across the shimmering surface. “This where it happened?” Buck asked, as he bit the end off a cheap cigar. I just nodded, my eyes never leaving the water.

Now a country sheriff sees some pretty weird and horrible stuff over the course of his career: farm accidents, domestic disputes (which sounds better than wife beating), auto accidents on quiet country roads, people who die alone on a remote farm and no one notices for three weeks, that kind of thing. When the beast crested the surface, Buck stood there, this man who had seen everything, and the cigar fell out of his mouth to the dirt below.

I didn’t see Joe’s reaction, but I did hear it. “God damn,” he said. “God damn.” That about summed it up.

We stood there, staring out at the water and the beast for what must have been two or three whole minutes before it suddenly turned its big flat head and looked straight at us. I could see its black, reptilian eyes from clear across the lake, and I made a point of meeting the creature’s gaze. It was my way of saying, I’m coming for you, damn you, whatever you are. I’m coming for you.

The thing dove beneath the surface once again and didn’t come back. We stood there a while longer, watching the still waters, then Bullock reached down and picked up the fallen cigar at his feet. He brushed it off and put it back in his mouth as he started to walk away.

“Where are you going?” demanded my son, grabbing at Bullock’s meaty arm.

Buck turned and looked back at us. There was a glint in his narrowed eyes. “I’ll be back,” he said, then headed for his patrol car.

Joe finally managed to lead me away from the water a half hour later. He took me inside, poured me a drink, and made me lie down. I was asleep within moments.

I dreamed of Ethan and Brian, but in my dream, they had big, black, reptilian eyes.

I awoke to a flickering light outside my window, but the house was dark. Pulling my boots back on as I went, I stumbled through the hallway until I found my way outside. And what a sight awaited me.

It was night, but you never would’ve known that by the number of torches surrounding the lake. The flames turned the sky orange, and their reflections danced on the water and made it look like the lake itself was on fire.

Then there were the people. There must have been two dozen men or more scurrying about, carrying boxes and wires and shotguns. One of them saw me and nodded as he passed by. I recognized John Pritchet, one of the men I had thrown off my property a few weeks ago.

Sheriff Bullock walked up to me and nodded a ‘hello’. I nodded back. “Can’t believe you did all this without me waking up,” I said.

“You needed the rest.” He shrugged.

I looked around my property, amazed by the number of people. “Everyone’s come out to help you, Tom,” Buck said. “Brian and Ethan had a lot of friends here.”

I choked up a bit there, my eyes watering, and my throat getting real tight. Buck gave me a minute to myself, then pointed over to the barn. “You want to explain something in there to me?” he asked. I nodded and let him guide me over.

Inside, he motioned over to a huge metal machine that sat in the corner. “How does this thing work?”

I swallowed, tried to remember how the salesman had put it. “It’s kind of like a giant vacuum cleaner, to extract the fish from their breeding pens when it’s time to harvest them. Never got a chance to install it.”

Buck chewed on his cigar appreciatively. “Does it work?”

“Far as I know.”

He looked back over at me, with that strange glint in his eyes again. “You want to help me get it set up?”

It took six of us to get it down to the water, and about half an hour to get the power cords to run from the generator to the machine. When everything was connected, it hummed quietly, just like the salesman had promised. “Nothing too loud,” the guy had said. “That’d just scare the fish.” Like getting sucked up by a giant metal tube wouldn’t be scary enough on its own.

All of that moving was heavy work. I was wiping the sweat from my brow when I finally got a good look at one of the boxes being carted about. The stencil on the side was partially covered by the arm of the guy carrying it, but it didn’t take much to recognize the three most important letters: T-N-T.

I found Bullock zipping up his fly as he came out of the old outhouse behind the barn. “You want to let me in on your plans here tonight, Sheriff?” I asked.

Buck lit up, and by that I mean his face lit up at the same time as he lit a new cigar. “Well,” he said, puffing the stogie into life, “it’s pretty simple. I’ve got men posted around the lake. In a little while, we’re going to start throwing dynamite into the water. Now, maybe we’ll get lucky, kill it first thing off, but I don’t think that’ll happen. What I expect is that the explosions will drive it over to your machine there, and we’ll suck it right out of the water. Then we’ll finish it off.”

He took the cigar out of his mouth and fixed me with a steely gaze. “But, Tom, if that doesn’t work, we’re going to resort to plan B. The way I see it, this thing, whatever it is, was just passing through. Maybe it had been through here a hundred times the past few years. Maybe not. In any case, you put up a dam and trapped it here. If we can’t kill it, I’ll give the order to blow the dam, and let the creature move on out of here on its own. It won’t be our problem anymore.”

He looked at me as if expecting a protest. I thought of Brian and Ethan and simply said, “When do we start?”

Bullock patted me on the shoulder and we walked down to the water.

The men were tense, understandably. The creature was poking its head up every few minutes, obviously agitated by everything going on around it. The caffeine from the strong coffee we were brewing didn’t serve to lighten our moods much either.

Things finally got underway about 2a.m. When Bullock was satisfied that everyone was in position, he gave the signal, and the TNT began to fly.

The first half-dozen or so sticks of dynamite hit the water too soon, dousing the fuses before they could do their jobs. Bullock yelled into his walkie-talkie, said for people to hold onto the dynamite a few seconds longer before throwing it. That added to the tension we all felt, but I think the townsfolk were more scared of the creature in the water than they were of the bombs in their hands, so they kept on lighting and throwing.

Before long, the night wa