Table Of ContentDescended From Darkness:
Apex Magazine Vol. I
Edited by
Jason Sizemore and Gill Ainsworth
Visit us at: http://www.apexbookcompany.com/apex-online
Cover Art "Machinery of the Stars" © by Vitaly S. Alexius
Cover design by Justin Stewart
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Table of Contents
Post Apocalypse---James Walton Langolf
These Days---Katherine Sparrow
In the Seams---Andrew C. Porter
The Nature of Blood---George Mann
Scenting the Dark---Mary Robinette Kowal
The Limb Knitter---Steven Francis Murphy
I Know an Old Lady---Nathan Rosen
Blakenjel---Lavie Tidhar
Behold: Skowt!---Jason Heller
Shaded Streams Run Clearest---Geoffrey W. Cole
Plebiscite AV3X---Jason Fisher
A Splash of Color---William T. Vandemark
Organ Nell---Jennifer Pelland
A Night at the Empire---Joy Marchand
Starter House---Jason Palmer
On the Shadow Side of the Beast---Ruth Nestvold
Cai and Her Ten Thousand Husbands---Gord Sellar
Dark Planet---Lavie Tidhar
The Puma---Theodora Goss
The Mind of a Pig---Ekaterina Sedia
Hindsight, in Neon---Jamie Todd Rubin
Waiting for Jakie---Barbara Krasnoff
Clockwork, Pathwork, and Ravens---Peter M. Ball
Hideki and the Gnomes---Mark Lee Pearson
Biographies
For all those who have believed in Apex all along
Post Apocalypse
James Walton Langolf
The letter came on Tuesday marked "Post Apocalypse."
It smelled like Aspen cologne and there was a smudge of barbeque sauce on
one corner.
Sarah ripped it up and threw it in the trash.
The next one came on Friday, also marked "Post Apocalypse", no barbeque
sauce. But this one had an ornate gold seal on the flap that said, "Today is the
last day of the rest of your life."
Cheery.
Sarah ran it through the shredder by her desk along with the letter that said she
might have already won twelve million dollars.
When Monday's letter came Sarah just sighed and tore off the end of the
envelope.
There was nothing inside.
"Ha ha. Very funny."
Down the street, she heard the tinkling music of the ice cream truck. She
stepped out onto the porch, and the mushroom cloud was on the horizon.
A sepia colored overlay, a movie played on a life size screen, the soundtrack
coming through the fillings in her teeth. All around her people were running and
screaming. There was the sound of gunfire in the distance. Her neighbors' house
was burning and the ash that covered the lawn was thick enough for angels.
Huh. Well.
In her pocket the phone was ringing. She answered it with, "Nice touch."
"Like it?" Ian said. "I saw it and thought of you."
"It doesn't match my outfit."
"Sure it does. You're wearing the red dress I bought you. Nothing says nuclear
sunset like Dolce & Gabbanna."
She was wearing ripped jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt.
"When is this? I thought I had another week."
She pulled the R-13 form from her back pocket. Purple, the standard color for
willful self-destruction. It was smudged, but she was pretty sure it wasn't today's
date.
"You do. I just thought you'd enjoy a little preview. Of course if this is too
much for you, you could always come home."
"No, Ian. I couldn't."
She closed the phone and headed inside to pack for her next assignment.
When she looked back over her shoulder, the ice cream van idled at the corner,
children in an orderly row waited for orange push-ups and popsicles.
It looked like it might rain later.
They'd met at a hurricane party in the French Quarter just after the turn of the
21st century. Sarah was a graduate student collecting data on pre-versus post-
disaster societies. Ian was shirtless, pouring mojitos too heavy on the mint.
The music was too loud. Guitars with strings made of razor wire, drums with
an irregular rhythm, and a blue-black woman chanting low, in a language Sarah
couldn't quite decipher. She understood the hunger though. The wanting and the
need. She could taste it like the sugar and salt and lime on her own skin.
The August heat was heavy and damp. Sarah could feel the lightning inside.
She liked his slow drawl and his quick smile, his soft grey eyes and the way
his callused hands made that whispering sound across her sweat-slick skin.
"You know," she said, slivers of ice clinking against the side of her drinking
jar, a sprig of mint pressed to her lips. "I really shouldn't be telling you this, but
that levee isn't going to hold."
"What? You mean the storm? Honey, a little bit of rain ain't going to hurt
nothing."
Sarah ran the damp mint down the hollow of her throat, and Ian's eyes
followed it.
"I'm not talking about just a little bit of rain."
He swallowed thickly and shook his head as if he was already underwater.
"You can't listen to a thing those old weathermen say. Fools wouldn't know a
rain cloud from a strong fart."
She took a step closer to him. They were almost touching now, their bodies
swaying slightly in time with the band.
"This time, they're right."
"That bad, you think?"
"Honey, I know it."
The muscles of his chest sang to her stroking fingertips.
Drowning would be such a waste.
"I can show you."
She breathed warm rum across his neck when she whispered in his ear. If he'd
struck a match, they'd have both gone up in flames.
The next day Sarah woke up back in her own bed with a brand new rose tattoo
on her ass and an unauthorized, undocumented time traveler tangled in her
sheets.
Over breakfast she'd tried to explain and somehow Ian just...got it.
He nodded his head as he shoveled in his eggs. He asked questions, all of
them thoughtful and intelligent. He wasn't freaked out.
That should have been her first clue.
"I want to go back," he said when she finished.
So once they'd filled out the paperwork (there was a mountain of it). They'd
booked a trip for the days following the storm.
They'd stood together on a bridge overlooking his hometown, sleeping restless
beneath the green water. Trees, cars, and the bloated corpses of dogs floated by
when Ian first asked her the question, "If they'd known for sure that this would
happen, you suppose they could have done something different?"
That initial question was like a stone dropped into a pond. Bigger questions,
theories, disasters, rippled all around them, and it seemed like only Sarah could
see the ugly, hulking shapes of things swimming just below the surface.
Ian had asked for and received a grant from the University. He was convinced
that if he could foresee the end of the world he could forestall it.
Sarah thought he was a genius. All her life, time travel had been used for
nothing but recreation or dry academic research. Together they set up the
Apocalypse program intending to make a difference.
But then they didn't.
Month after month, year after year, time after time, the world just kept on
ending. And they watched.
And watched.
And watched.
Sarah tried to calculate how many millions of people she'd seen die. She could
barely make it to the john before she threw up.
Still they had no idea how their own timeline would end.
She'd tried to talk to Ian about her doubts and they'd had a fight that ended
with a black eye for her, and him spitting a tooth out in his hand.
Sarah had taken the next ticket to the end of the world. She hadn't seen Ian
since.
The shift change seemed rougher than usual.
Sarah was sitting at the breakfast table drinking a cup of coffee when the
vortex opened practically at her feet without so much as a courtesy call. If her
bag hadn't been there beside her, she'd have been forced to go on without it---all
of her research with its carefully drawn charts and painstaking notes would have
been lost.
The invisible walls of the time shift sealed tight around her, shrinking her skin
and squeezing the air from her lungs. Her bones creaked with the pressure and
the copper taste of blood and bile slicked her throat.
Sarah couldn't help feeling Ian had booked it that way on purpose to punish
her.
When the vortex opened up again and Sarah was spit out, she could tell it
wasn't the faded and lumpy linoleum of the kitchen underneath her bruised ass.
She opened her eyes.
She was lying on the beach who knew how many miles from the house. It
shouldn't have even been possible, but there it was.
The water was a cool murky green. Low waves barely ruffled the surface but
they still managed to pull at her left shoe. Her bag was already bobbing a few
feet out.
"Goddamn it."
The sky was the same odd green as the water, dotted with ugly, yellowish
clouds and, once again, it seemed to be on fire.
The letter was already there beside her on the sand, the envelope red as a
wound, URGENT stamped infection black.
"Lovely."
Inside was the R-13 form. Powder blue indicating a Celestial Event.
What is the nature of The Event?
Blanks for the date, time and weather conditions.
Please state, in your own words, what you observed leading up to The Event.
Be SPECIFIC.
Remember details MATTER!!!
Behind the form was a small white card. In Ian's handwriting were the words,
"Real time."
God, he could be such a dick.
The comet, or asteroid or whatever it was, streaked through the sky apparently
aiming for a point somewhere between her eyes. The wind screamed in her ears.
Her teeth vibrated in their sockets and her bones felt ready to shatter. It started to
break apart and chunks of fiery rock rained down around her. She could smell
her hair burning and see blisters rising on her hands.
The ocean was beginning to boil, and foul-smelling steam, like rancid fish,
rose up around her. Sweat stung her eyes.
"Shit."
The vortex was closed.
She looked down at the envelope.
"Post Apocalypse." That joke just keeps getting funnier every time you tell it.
Asshole.
Sarah thought that if she had a pen she might just start filling out the form for
the hell of it.
She would write, "huge motherfucking rock" in the space next to Nature of
The Event.
August 29, 2113.
She looked down at her watch.
3:27 p.m.
Weather conditions?
