Ruined

“I once killed a man and his wife in Northeastern Nigeria with a Romanian FPK sniper rifle,” the patient said flatly. “Never even met them before that day, and I ended them both. It was just a job.”

The man absentmindedly ran a fingertip around the edge of his sweating glass before taking another sip of sweet tea.

“The target was some kind of local magistrate. The details were in the mission brief. I’m not sure why the Intel guys always felt compelled to tell us the stories. We didn’t care. There weren’t a dozen of us in the program back then—all former DevGru or Delta hitters. We had spilled enough blood to get comfortable with it, but we still would have been better off not knowing. As I said, it was just a job.

“This guy was making noise about seizing the regional oil reserves. The revolutionary idea that ultimately killed him was to keep the wealth with the schmucks who dug it out of the ground. The locals were poor as dirt, and they liked what he had to say. The spooks determined that it would be most effective if we could scrape him in public, something flashy and exciting. But it had to look like a local hit.

“My spotter was a guy named Jeff Woods. Jeff was a great guy. We had worked together for a couple years and knew each other better than brothers. Jeff was a real lunatic back in the World, but he was stone cold downrange. Jeff’s dead now. He got decapitated by a command-detonated EFP IED in Iraq a couple months later on another agency op.

“We infiltrated the night before and set up in an abandoned house. The roof was gone so it was hotter than hell when the sun came up. Jeff ranged us at 625 meters. That’s the far end of what an FPK would reliably do, but we had to make it look local. Boko Haram operated thereabouts, and they were some bloodthirsty scum. So long as we used locally sourced iron and didn’t leave a footprint, they would be the obvious shooters.  

“Boko Haram literally translates ‘Westernization is Sacrilege,’ and they didn’t need a reason to blow a man’s head off. Most of those nutjobs couldn’t read, but they absolutely worshipped death. Every-freaking-body seemed to be on the wrong side of their particular brand of god. They were the only mob on the planet too vile for ISIS.

“The man was punctual, I’ll give him that. We were supposed to do him in the middle of some kind of speech to a local crowd—plenty of spectators with cell phone cameras to document the event in spectacular detail. The problem was the way he had arranged this particular meet-and-greet.

“It really all came down to 10th-grade geometry. In that part of the world having a whole bunch of wives is the mark of a real man. In the States I think it would likely kill a dude, but women are different over there. This guy had several and a herd of kids to match.

“He was standing on this squatty dais in the middle of the town square, and he had his wives arrayed all around facing outward. They were all wearing garish bright African clothes and those big fake grins. I can remember how white their teeth looked through that crappy 3.5-power communist gun sight.

“The trouble was that one of these women, a pretty girl in her late twenties, was standing right between me and the primary. We were holed up in this blown-out building. No amount of shifting or moving around inside the house could get me clear line of sight past her. The spooks naturally had a drone up watching the whole thing, and Jeff had them on the satcom. When I realized I couldn’t get a clean LOS without breaking cover, I had Jeff ask Langley for guidance.

“The Agency guys screwed around for maybe five minutes. By now this man had been talking for nearly fifteen, and we didn’t know how much longer he was going to be there. After what seemed like a lifetime those pogues at Langley just came back and told me to use my discretion. I chewed on that one for maybe half a minute and made my decision easily enough. This was a mission. We had gone to a lot of trouble to set this up, G2 the op, and E and E into position. We might not get another chance. Additionally, it was hot, and I had already spent enough time in Africa for one life.

“I pulled in tight on the FPK, centered that crummy three-post reticle on the woman’s face, and then cheated up a bit to compensate for the range. The day was indeed hot--Africa hot, but there wasn’t any wind. It was actually a really great day to shoot, just like being on the range in Virginia in the summertime. I let my breath out halfway and squeezed that gritty Romanian trigger, sending one of those heavy Combloc rounds right through her face. 

“That woman dropped like a sack of cement. I’ll never forget the look in her eyes. This chick was dead before she knew she had been shot. She went down instantly, and I got a good flash of the primary’s bright white shirt. Recoil’s not bad on an FPK so I centered on him, used the same holdover, and punched the next one through his chest. Flesh and gore went all over the place, and that’s when the screaming started. There is always screaming.

“Jeff and I abandoned the gun and some sundry crap to make it look like a Boko Haram hit and didi’d out of there. Naturally the local constabulary came after us, but we had such a head start that it didn’t make any difference. We cleared the first terrain feature and made it to the PZ, a tidy little clearing we had reconned on the way in. A Task Force Little Bird picked us up just as advertised. A couple of hours later we were sitting in a hotel room in Abuja sipping a cold Coke and debriefing the spooks on the eyes-on particulars.

“They were thrilled--said it had been perfect. They were even pleased about the woman. They felt her involvement would help galvanize the man’s followers against Boko Haram and make it easier to keep them in the fold, ideologically speaking.”

The man set his glass of tea down carefully on the edge of the desk and leaned back in his chair, raising his face to the ceiling. His sightless eyes were a mass of scars, but they could obviously still see the details of that day clearly. The VA psychologist knew when to talk and when to shut up. This was the latter. He gave the man time to continue at his own pace.

“Doc, Africa’s just dirty with orphans. The whole bloody continent is awash in them. You can’t go anyplace without tripping over the filthy little cretins--begging, panhandling, stealing, running around in the dirt just trying to stay alive in that craptastic place. In some parts it seems like there’s more orphans than adults.”

The man took a deep breath and paused before continuing. He leaned back forward in his chair and let his elbows rest where he remembered the edge of the desk to be.

“But at least a few of them are there because of me.”     

The Windago

Author’s note: We lived in Alaska for three years when I was in the Army, so this setting was familiar. I have actually flown out to the Eskimo village of Nulato a couple of times. This story came to me as a particularly vivid nightmare. I typed it just as I dreamt it.

         Mark Chambers sat mesmerized by the emerald landscape that flashed underneath the small turboprop plane as it churned across the Alaskan muskeg. The winding rivers and marshes teemed with life, much of it large enough to be seen from this height. He turned to see his fifteen-year-old daughter Kirsten similarly occupied with the opposite window. He was pleased she had come. Her mother had not blessed the trip, but it had been a decade or more since she had blessed anything Mark had done. He forced the thought from his mind.

         The pilot banked gently left and cut the power sufficiently to initiate a gradual descent. Mark could make out the linear scar of an airstrip running parallel to the river below. He snugged his seatbelt slightly and reached over to do the same for his daughter. Satisfied that they were ready for landing he leaned back and closed his eyes. He always closed his eyes during takeoffs and landings. It was a habit. He supposed if nothing else this fact alone should have forever disqualified him as a pilot. That thought brought a smile.

         Kirsten’s company had been nothing but icing. Mark had written for a variety of magazines since well before she was born. An amicable phone call to his editor at National Geographic had easily secured permission to take her along. Spending a summer field trip in the wilds of Alaska with no one but her dad and a photographer should make for spirited discussion when she got back to school. As he got her for the entire summer anyway in keeping with the custody agreement, Mark was pleased he had been able to put it all together.

         As the plane lined up on final the pilot came over the intercom, “Everybody buckle up if you haven’t already. We’ll be down in a hot minute. Something’s sort of strange, though. There aren’t any kids out on the taxiway. Every time I’ve been here before you have to make a low pass or two just to shoo the kids out of the way. Getting a plane in here is a pretty big deal for these folks. No matter. We’ll sort it out directly. Sit tight.”

         Jim Elliott, a bush pilot Mark had known and used for years, greased the plane down as though he had done it all his life; which, for all practical purposes, he had. The transition from flying to rolling was seamless. For a man who hated flying as much as Mark did, Jim was the ideal pilot. As Jim taxied the plane onto the parking apron and killed the engine, there yet remained no sign of life from the village.

         Mark and William, his photographer, downloaded their meager gear while Kirsten poked around the airstrip and Jim checked over the airplane. Jim reached deep into the back of the cargo compartment and produced a Winchester 12-gauge pump shotgun. The weapon sported an extended magazine, and there were at least a dozen spare shells stored bandoleer-fashion in the sling.  

         “Jim, you know something I don’t?” Mark asked. “You really think we need the howitzer?”

         “No, buddy, I don’t,” Jim answered honestly. “But we’re not the dominant predator out here like we were in Anchorage. I just don’t see the harm.”

         Jim slipped the sling over his shoulder and grabbed his flight bag with a disarming smile.

         “I’d guess we’ve got another forty-five minutes to an hour of usable daylight,” the pilot continued. “Let’s head into town and settle on bunking arrangements before it gets too late.”

         As the party made its way down the four-wheeler track that led to town, Mark filled Kirsten in on the town and its inhabitants.

         “Nulato is an Inuit Eskimo village,” he explained. “It’s been here at least two hundred years and sports a population of around four to six hundred depending upon the time of year and how many kids have gone Outside for school. We’ve been here before, so everybody pretty much knows William and me. They’re gonna go ape over your blond hair. They don’t get a whole lot of that up here. It’s less than a quarter mile from the strip into town—that’ll be it just over this next rise.

         “Everything store-bought comes by air. In the summer the primary mode of travel is by four-wheeler. In the winter it’s by snow machine. It is peculiar that we haven’t seen or heard from anybody yet. As Jim said, having a plane come in is sort of a social event in my experience. Of course, this may all be something Todd and Amy put them up to.”

         Todd and Amy Ratcliffe were the focus of their upcoming article. Meeting and marrying in grad school, they had been in Nulato for two years studying a variety of areas. Caribou migrations represented the topic of the day, and Mark’s discussions with them by satellite phone had promised stunning photographs along with earthy material about which to write. They were, however, notorious practical jokers.

On a previous trip, Mark had been surprised when Amy had slipped into his room early one morning and slid open his window before leaving a basket of greens on the sill. The shock of awakening to find the enormous head of a live moose grazing peacefully not five feet from where he had slept was nearly enough to stop his heart. Amy brought the story up every time they were together. Mark was always a good sport and bore up under the ridicule right up until she claimed he had wet his pants. At that point he would always set the record straight and explain that, while he had indeed screamed like a little girl, he had not actually peed the bed.

They were good friends, and he looked forward to seeing them again. The couple lived in their own cabin on the other side of town. While William and Jim were planning to grab a bunk somewhere in town, Mark and Kirsten had an invitation to the spare room with the Ratcliffes.

         As they crested the hill, the entire town came into view. The tidy frame buildings were still nicely maintained, but there was no sign of people anywhere. Mark had never been to the place before that it did not have a dozen or more little Inuit kids tearing up and down summer or winter. It did seem peculiar.

         As they walked into the little town proper, Mark was surprised to notice fleeting glimpses of dark faces darting back behind curtains from all the buildings they passed. They knocked on several doors as they passed, but were unable to convince anyone to respond. Making their way to Greg Paslit’s place, the nominal mayor of the community, they stepped up onto his porch and banged on the door.

         “Greg, open the door, friend,” Chambers shouted as he knocked. “It’s Mark. You knew we were coming. Open up.”

         A familiar voice from behind the door answered, “Mark, get back in your plane and leave. It is not safe for you here. Please, go back now.”

         “Greg, what are you talking about?” Mark asked puzzled. “Open the door and let’s talk about this. You’re confusing me here, man.”

         William had his camera out and was snapping pictures of the deserted community. Jim slipped his flight bag over his left shoulder and shifted his weight so the grip of the shotgun rested just behind his right hand. Mark was the only other member of the party who had noticed the movement, but it gave him an involuntary shiver.

         “What are you jabbering about, Greg?” Mark continued. “What’s not safe about Nulato? Aside from the fact that nobody will come out and talk to us, it seems pretty normal to me. What’s going on?”

         The muffled voice returned from the other side of the door. “Mark, if you trust me, get back in your plane. I mean it. We cannot protect you here. Please leave.”

         Mark looked quizzically at the rest of his group. Kirsten looked shaken.

         Mark leaned close to the door and lowered his voice before speaking. “Really, Greg. What is this all about?”

         There was a brief pause. Mark could almost catch a tremor in the voice of his friend as he answered simply, “It is the season of the Windago, Mark Chambers. Please just leave now before it gets dark. I cannot speak with you any further. I have to get my family into the basement for safety. Good luck.”

         Mark listened as the footsteps receded into the house.

         “Jim, you know anything about a Windago?” Mark asked. “Sounds like an RV.”

         The pilot thought for a moment before answering.

         “I have heard the legend,” he said. “The Inuits tell an ancient story about the Windago. It is some kind of evil spirit that comes to life during certain specific times in the northern reaches. It’s said to be bloodthirsty…eats people according to the legend. The story goes back as far as the Inuits themselves do. I never got the details. Never really paid much attention to it before now. Whatever it is sure has Greg spooked, though. What do you want to do, boss? We’ve still got time to get back to the plane and launch before hard dark.” His hand stroked the stock of the shotgun absentmindedly.

         “I think this is all fairly ridiculous, but will make for some great Geographic fodder,” he answered with a smile. “Let’s get out to Todd and Amy’s and get their take on all this. If Nulato beds down for a day or two during Windago season, we’ll just all hang out with them and it’ll make some great background for the story. William, looks like you have plenty of shots of the deserted town. In a couple days when it comes alive again it’ll make for some great before and after stuff. Just follow me.”

         Mark took Kirsten’s hand and headed down the road toward the far end of town. Jim and William fell in behind them. Jim slid the strap of his flight bag securely up his left shoulder and shifted the shotgun to the ready. When Kirsten looked back at him he smiled. She smiled back, but her heart wasn’t in it.

         The Ratcliff cabin was less than a quarter mile outside of town. The route to it was little more than a footpath worn down through the shoulder-high summer grass. The breeze stiffened slightly and the grass seemed to move with a mind of its own, appearing more like water than flora. As they rounded the last curve, they could see that the lights were on in the cabin and the front door stood slightly ajar. As they approached the austere little porch with the hand-made willow chairs, Mark motioned for everyone else to stand back while he mounted the steps.

         Calling to his friends, Mark stopped at the threshold and gently pushed the door open. Stepping slowly into the doorway he looked around the tidy living room and fell backwards against the doorframe at the sight that greeted him.

         The modest furnishings of the little cabin were tossed and broken, framed photographs and dishes were strewn haphazardly everywhere as though there had been a great struggle. Blood still fresh and wet black was splashed liberally throughout. Mark felt his breath hang in his throat as he looked upward to the lifeless forms of his two friends suspended by their ankles from the rafters of the cabin. One of Amy’s arms had been torn raggedly from her body, and blood still dripped from the wound. Both of the corpses were ripped and mangled as though slaughtered by an animal. Coils of intestines hung from Todd’s ruptured belly in a cascade of gore.

         Regaining his senses Mark tumbled back out of the doorway and off the porch, his eyes wide with terror.

         “Todd and Amy are dead! We’re leaving now!” he gasped. “Let’s get back to the plane!”

         William seemed confused by events, but a glance through the open door made Jim drop his flight bag and cycle the action of his shotgun.

         The wind picked up to a soft roar and an inhuman howl lifted above the sound of the grass, vacillating unnaturally in pitch. Kirsten stifled a sob, and Mark pulled the girl close out of reflex. The dim light and the wind turned the entire world outside the light of the cabin into a sea of shadows and movement.

         “Right,” Jim said. “Stay close to me and don’t slow down. Sing out if anybody sees anything. Let’s go.”

         Mark and Kirsten fell in behind the pilot, while William pressed close in the rear. They followed the little trail at a trot while the windblown grass pressed them from the sides. Rounding the first curve by feel as fast as they dared in the dim light, there was suddenly an explosion of motion and William screamed long and shrill.

         Kirsten shrieked, “Daddy, he’s gone!” and pointed back down the trail.

         There was a sickening tearing sound followed by a wet gurgle just audible above the wind. Mark could hear some weak thrashing and then that same long howl. Down the trail back toward the cabin he could just make out the red glow of a pair of eyes looking back at him from the darkness.

         “Jim, there…” he shouted as he gestured toward the cabin. “Do you see it?”

         In one smooth motion Jim pressed Mark and his daughter down with his left hand as he swung his weapon to bear. He loosed two charges of buckshot as fast as he could cycle the action and then pulled the writer to his feet.

         “C’mon, let’s go!” the pilot shouted.

         “Wait, Jim, no!” Mark pleaded. “What about William?”

         Kirsten whimpered slightly.

         “William is dead, Mark,” he shouted. “And we have to go. Now!”

         The three remaining members of the group staggered madly down the trail toward the little Inuit town, trying to find footing on the trail in the darkness. Kirsten was sobbing openly.

With a horrifying suddenness, the thing burst out of the grass again and slammed all three of them to the ground. Kirsten screamed madly as she felt the creature’s weight press her into the dirt and its claws sink deep into her shoulder. Mark struck blindly at the beast as it flailed among them, its limbs knocking him aside without obvious effort. Jim brought the butt of his shotgun down on the creature by reflex and felt the wood of the stock crack against sinew and meat. He swiveled the weapon and pressed the muzzle as deep into it as he was able before stroking the trigger.

         The 12-gauge exploded like a thunderclap, and the monster convulsed away from the girl to begin thrashing mindlessly in the trail. Mark pulled his daughter close as Jim cycled the action on his gun. The pilot then reflexively rolled between the two of them and the dying monster. Before he could fire again, the thing fell still. In the darkness Mark heard its breath coming in ragged gasps before finally terminating in a long shrill cry. Unlike the earlier howling, the cry now had an eerie human quality.

         Mark groped in his pocket for his butane lighter. Struggling to shield the little flame against the wind, he held it out toward the still form in the trail. In the dim flickering light he made out the shape of a thin young Inuit boy, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, sprawled haphazardly in death. The boy was naked and there was an ugly jagged wound in the center of his chest. As the wind ebbed a thin wisp of smoke crawled out from the hole, and the boy’s body shivered slightly one last time before falling deathly still.

         Mark looked from the boy to his daughter and then to his friend. He could find no words. Kirsten moaned softly as he shifted his weight against her. Turning the flickering light toward his little girl, he could make out the sticky blackness of blood slowly soaking her t-shirt. Lifting the teenager as gently as he was able, he shouted, “C’mon, we’ve got to get her back to Fairbanks!”

         Both men stumbled along the trail with Jim in the lead, his shotgun tracking everywhere along their route. They pressed through the town without pausing and reached the airstrip winded and breathless. Jim took one last long look around before safing the gun and tossing it into the back of the plane. He tore the protective covers off of the engine intakes and pitot tubes and left them on the ground. As he climbed into the cockpit and began throwing switches, Mark lifted his daughter’s still form into one of the passenger seats and fastened her belt. By the dim cabin lights he retrieved his folding camp knife and cut the blood-soaked cloth away from the unconscious girl’s shoulder. Relief flooded over him as he saw that the four gashes were deep but obviously had not reached anything vital.

He leapt inside the plane and fastened the door behind him before taking the seat next to his daughter and tearing open the plane’s first aid kit. He had a large roll of cotton bandage pressed against the wound as the turbine engine began to whine. Rinsing the wound with half a bottle of peroxide, he slapped Jim on the shoulder and gave him a thumb’s up. Settling back into his seat, he dried and dressed his daughter’s injury with gauze and secured the dressing with surgical tape.

As the plane began to roll, he pulled his daughter’s head over onto his shoulder and stroked her blood-soaked hair. Whispering softly to her above the roar of the plane, he rocked gently back and forth, attempting to quench his own madness with the action. Jim extinguished the cabin lights and lined the plane up on the runway. Without voluntary thought, Mark let his head fall back against the headrest and squeezed his eyes shut tight for takeoff. At the same time, Kirsten whimpered and moved to burrow her head even deeper into her father’s shoulder, her long wet hair attenuating the movement. Her eyelids fluttered open, and, by the dim glow of the instrument lights, her eyes shown a deep but brilliant red.

Small Wonder

Author’s note: I experienced this story as a nightmare one evening soon after one of my kids was born. It woke me violently such that I could not get back to sleep. By the time the sun came up, I had it typed up on my laptop. It unsettles me to this day.

Bob McGowan was a happy man. A successful entrepreneur in his mid-forties, Bob had life by the tail. His business was successful beyond his most foolish hopes, and financially he lacked for nothing. He and his wife Margaret had restored a beautiful old house in a good part of town, and Bob now had the time to pursue those things which made him happy. A truly respected reputation on the tennis court and a half dozen immaculately-restored grandfather clocks stood in triumphant testimony to the way Bob spent his time of late. The child had been the key. Little Robert had resurrected both his mental health and his marriage, but it had been a very iffy thing, a very iffy thing, indeed.

Bob and Margaret, like most professional couples foolishly believing themselves to be in control of their lives, had decided to start a family after four years of marriage. On the appointed day, Margaret had actually fixed a special dinner replete with candles and music to celebrate the Pill's imminent departure from their lives. They had enjoyed an extraordinary meal, ferried the last two months of her prescription out to the trash can together, and retired for the evening. Bob and Margaret retired similarly on a regular basis over the succeeding several months but to no avail. A child was simply not forthcoming.

After ten months, Margaret grew worried and consulted a specialist. Months of drugs, doctors, and institutionalized dehumanization followed with similar results. Then one day Bob had a crisis that came up at the plant, and they missed an appointment. With silent consent, they just never rescheduled.

As time passed, talk of diapers, strollers, and nurseries gradually faded from Bob and Margaret's lives. Their relationship grew cold, as both sought hobbies and recreation to fill the void in their hearts and their schedules. With an unspoken resignation, Margaret had finally tucked the baby name book in her closet behind her shoes and outfitted the spare bedroom in antiques and a canopy bed, solemn in the realization that the room would never be a nursery. Bob's business flourished, if for no other reason than the amount of time he devoted to it.

The accident had been a real scare for Bob, an emotional klaxon that reminded him that absolutely nothing in his life was permanent. Margaret had been out walking along her standard route near the park, on the back side where the road bordered the national forest, when she felt a piercing squeal in her ears and collapsed. She had emerged sometime later on the old county road spattered with mud and sporting a brutal bruise to her forehead. An illiterate black man who sold produce from his pickup truck spotted her and took her to the hospital.

The doctors gave Margaret a thorough once-over and ordered a CAT scan. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, they pronounced her fit and released her to her terrified husband. Theories among the physicians ranged from an unexpected bump to an unrepentant motorist to a loss of footing on the road's shoulder to her succumbing to dehydration on a torrid August morning. Margaret had no recollection of the fall.

It had only been at Bob's dogged insistence five weeks later that Margaret had dug through the medicine chest and produced the test. As she reluctantly urinated on the toothbrush-looking instrument she shook her head at Bob's unrealistic assessment. Margaret was an athletic woman and had always been a little irregular. The nausea she felt had all the markings of the virus currently making the rounds at the school where she substituted. Regardless, the bump had only recently disappeared on her forehead, and there was no telling what odd side effects might be produced by the prodigious crop of drugs the doctors had fed her while in the hospital. Margaret was so unconcerned as to the outcome of the endeavor, that she had set the indicator down in the bathroom to percolate and started cleaning up the kitchen, losing herself in her work. She forgot about the test entirely.

Her first indication that something was amiss had been when Bob had stumbled wide-eyed into the kitchen and mumbled something unintelligible. She had responded with a confused stare, looking her insane husband over until she spied the indicator dangling limply from his fingers. With a shocked flush, she rushed to her husband to see for herself. To her unbridled amazement, she saw that the spot was pink. At forty-one years old and after so many years of trying and failing, she was going to have a baby.

Bob's employees thanked the stars that their maniac boss now had something other than work on which to spend his time. Margaret's friends threw her baby showers until the house veritably swam with changing pads and diaper bags. Bob bought a bag of diapers each week and stashed them in the hall closet, determined to plan the event in advance as much as possible. Bob's friends thought him pathetic.

The doctors warned Margaret to slow down and take it easy. They reminded her that she was on the very edge of the envelope as far as safely carrying a child was concerned and that, at her age, one never knew what to expect. Margaret took vitamins and attended a maternity aerobics class.

The boy was born six weeks prematurely and weighed just over four pounds but, considering the circumstances, was as healthy as could have been hoped. Bob felt things he never knew existed and, had some bizarre circumstance demanded it, he would have unflinchingly died for the little pink bundle right there in the delivery room. Generally an unemotional man, Bob had held his wife and cried hard and long, trying and failing to assimilate gracefully the changes that had just been visited on his life.

They named the boy Robert and, after a week in the hospital, took him home snuggled into the most expensive baby seat on the market. The child was almost unexceptionally quiet, and the nurses all commented that he had the most gorgeous green eyes and the sweetest disposition.

Bob and Margaret divided the responsibilities evenly and rationally, working through the feedings and the schedules and the occasional bout of crankiness with the efficiency of a Swiss-made watch. Little Robert grew like a rocket and quickly made up the deficit on the weight charts that he had lost by arriving six weeks too soon. At six months, Robert was a healthy little boy, normal in every way.

It was a Tuesday evening, and Bob was on duty. After an uneventful bottle at 11:00 and a world-class burp, Robert had settled down for the second leg of his evening without so much as a whimper. At 3:30 Bob awoke to the now-familiar howl signaling an empty stomach or a wet diaper or both. Rolling out of bed, he mechanically checked the clock and slipped into his bathrobe. He was trying vainly to locate his left slipper in the dark when he heard glass breaking down the hall.

Awareness flooded Bob's being as though he had been doused with ice water. He charged into the hallway, shattering a floor lamp, and was to the baby's door in three strides. He threw his weight against the door before he had fully turned the knob and tore a substantial piece of door facing loose from the wall.

The sight which met him in the dim glow of the night light seemed to stop his heart. The bottom quarter of the glass was shattered and shards of storm window glittered in the soft light where they lay strewn across the carpet. The thing which now stretched hungrily from the broken window to the baby's bed was a brown mottled color and as thick as Bob's thigh. Bob would have at first thought it a huge snake were it not for the wide bifurcated appendage that now gently but firmly lifted his son over the crib's rail. The two leaf-like limbs on the end of what he could only subconsciously register as a tentacle wrapped fully around young Robert and over his mouth, their muddy color a stark contrast to the child's wide white eyes.

Bob willed himself against the thing without conscious thought. He dove across the room and wrapped his arms around the trunk of it as he screamed for Margaret to bring a knife or hatchet or something. The arm was cool to the touch and immensely strong yet seemed to lift the child with a tenderness incongruous with its monstrous nature. Bob anchored himself firmly to it but was dragged helplessly back toward the window.

Margaret arrived at the door with an inhuman shriek but, driven by Bob's screamed orders, had disappeared into the hallway to find a tool or weapon. She reappeared a moment later with a butter knife left over from her late-evening snack, the only blade of any substance anywhere near the baby's room. Bob wrenched the blade into the tentacle until the butt of it pierced his palm but succeeded only in bending it double and losing a fingernail. He put no more than a scratch on the pebbled hide of the thing holding his child. Bob was pressed against the window facing now, screaming and crying as he futilely fought to keep the last three feet of the monster inside his house. After what seemed a lifetime, Margaret reappeared in the doorway, this time with a carpet knife she used to cut silk flowers.

Bob seized the little knife from his horrified wife and extended the blade as far as it would go. He slammed the steel in a brief arc and dug as deeply into the thing as the geometry of the tool would allow, wrenching and twisting to deepen the wound. The arm spasmed violently but held the child gently above the floor as Bob tore and twisted with the razor-sharp blade, spilling dark sticky fluid liberally over himself and the room.

With the rage of a madman, Bob ripped deeper into the tentacle, tearing through gristle and sinew-like material with the energy of a man possessed. Margaret simultaneously tore desperately but vainly at the appendages folded around little Robert. With an inhuman grunt, Bob leaned against the blade and cut through the last of the toughly corded material in the thing, dropping the last three feet of it and the baby to the floor with a sudden rush. In a thick spray of fluid, the stump of the tentacle slithered quickly back out through the shattered window.

Bob could not speak. Clawing for breath, he ripped the sticky brown pads from around his son and ran into the hallway, dragging his wife behind him with a hand now slick with organic fluids. He caught a glimpse of the severed thing quivering on the floor of the nursery as he left.

Bob stopped himself in the hallway and looked through the front windows, breathing harshly and clinging to his son with one arm and his wife with the other. Colored lights sped across the glass in a rhythmic fashion, and he breathed a prayer of thanks that someone in his neighborhood had called the police. Terrified, he felt a knot grow in his stomach as he recognized the lights not to be red or blue but rather pink, orange, green, and several other colors for which descriptors seemed to fail him. As this information began to register on his stunned mind, he threw his shoulder into the glass door of his gun cabinet, shattering it into the floor. Passing young Robert to his hysterical mother, Bob retrieved the Remington 12-gauge he used to hunt turkeys and began feeding shells into the loading gate on the bottom.

Margaret's screams changed in timbre, and Bob felt a small shudder through the soles of his bare feet. Shotgun shells spilling onto the floor, Bob recognized that the weapon's magazine was full and cycled the slide to charge the big gun, casually noticing blood from his torn hands glistening on the blued receiver. Bob had just wrapped his left arm around his wife and son and turned for the back of the house when the floor jerked violently. The entire house then twisted at an insane angle.

Bob fell hard against a wall but regained his balance just long enough to be thrown to the floor by the acceleration of the house moving rapidly upward. Summoning all of his strength, he pulled himself across the canted hardwood to where his wife curled insanely around their child. Glancing briefly out the dining room window he caught a horrible image of his neighborhood spinning away as the house was lifted violently into the sky by some unimaginable force.

Bob dropped the weapon and wrapped both arms tightly around his wife and son. Tears streamed down his face. In a short moment his wife stopped shaking and lifted her head from over the child, turning to look at Bob with a stunned terror too deep to describe.

Above the crashing of crystal and the splintering of furniture, amidst the twisting of timbers and the banshee howl of the wind screaming past the house as it ascended, the ambient temperature dropped and their ears popped with altitude. Husband and wife were simultaneously drawn to the placid countenance of their infant son. The six-month-old infant, looking upward and speaking plainly for the first time in his life, kept repeating softly in a voice they had never before heard,

"Home…

 home…

 home…

 home…"

The iron Rat

Author’s note: This story began as a late-night discussion among friends. We challenged each other to come up with a quick fictional tale off the cuff based upon something that was in the room, and this was mine. It was inspired by a little metal decorative rodent that our host kept on her coffee table. The following week, I went back to type it up properly.

         The young man pulled his motorcycle into the shadow of a long-disused train stop and dropped the kickstand. He had never been to Chicago before. His family would never allow it. It was a dangerous place awash with peril. It was darkness.

         He had grown up on a rural farm After. There was no travel, so he knew little if anything of what lay outside the immediate confines of his community. He and his family raised their own food and bartered occasionally with neighbors but kept unexceptionally to their own clan. All that changed when they came and took her.

         He had been in the field working. He heard the gunshots and saw the smoke. By the time he got to the house, they were gone and his brother was dying. They had taken his woman with them.

         The roving gangs sortied from the city in search of food or whatever else they needed or coveted. Only strength kept them at bay. On that day their timing and numbers had ensured their success. His brother had killed two of them in the process, their scraggly bodies left where they had fallen.

         His parents had begged him not to go. The dangers were too great, and his hope so dim. However, love can be a powerful quantity, some would say the most powerful force in the world, and it reigned supreme over reason. For this reason, on the strength of love, he had filled his motorcycle with what little gasoline remained, strapped his grandfather’s pistol on his belt, and made his way into the city.

         He made good time. There was no traffic. The only impediments were the burned out wrecks that littered the roads. Everything of value had long since been scavenged. He arrived in the heart of the city proper by early afternoon. He noticed furtive eyes that followed him as he motored down the deserted streets, but the unfamiliar sight and sound of a big man on a motorcycle was sufficient to send onlookers scurrying into dark buildings for cover. He felt and was a stranger in a strange land.

         He pocketed the keys to the heavy bike and checked the gas cap to ensure it was locked in place. It would be difficult but not impossible to steal his ride. He hoped he would not be here long enough to worry overly about scavengers. The young man had to admit to himself in the depths of his heart that his was a potentially baseless hope.

He really had no plan. He knew his woman was here, somewhere. He also knew there was nothing he would not do and no one he would not kill to get her back. Beyond that, he was simply drifting.

         He checked his weapon for the fourth time that day. The .40 caliber Glock had belonged to his grandfather, a policeman, and it was meticulously maintained. He carried three loaded magazines, and the chamber was hot. He was young and strong, and he felt ready for whatever awaited him. It took less than five minutes.

         He never saw the weapon or the assailant. The pain in the back of his head was indescribable. There were flashes in his retinas, and the world went dark. When he regained consciousness, he was seated slumped forward in a heavy metal chair. His hands were secured behind him with plastic cuffs and a bag was over his head. He willed himself to sit upright, and the weight of his head tugged on his neck.

The pain where he had been struck was bewildering. Through the heavy cloth hood, he could hear movement. He forced himself not to panic, but the inability to sense his surroundings was utterly terrifying. He struggled, but his hands were utterly immobile.

         When he sat erect, he heard murmurs. The words were muffled and distant and occasionally punctuated with brief spasms of laughter. He heard scurrying footsteps, and then someone poked him in the shoulder with a stick. The molestation was not painful, but he grunted in surprise. With that an unseen hand removed the hood.

         The room was cavernous and dark, and he seemed to sit in its center. A camp lantern sputtered on a table in front of him and cast a finite sphere of light that was insufficient to penetrate more than a few meters into the gloom. The room was cold. The tile of the floor seemed to draw out its warmth.

         Leaning passively with his back against the table was a man. He was of average dimensions, and he held his arms crossed. His unruly shock of gray hair intimated an age in his early sixties.

The man stood passively and studied the boy, his eyes seeming to soak in the young man and his details. After what seemed an eternity, the older man stood erect and walked the short distance toward him. Only after he moved did the captive see the woman seated behind him.

         The woman was much younger, no more than thirty, and she looked as though she had been poured into her clothes. All of the city folk were thin, almost gaunt, but this woman was unnaturally beautiful. She wore fishnet stockings and a short dress that seemed impractically revealing. The woman leaned forward and rested her chin on her hands, smiling at the young man in a way he had never before experienced. In that moment in the dim light, he felt wanted. The look confused him. It seemed incongruous. He shook his head incrementally to clear the thought and turned his attention to the man now standing before him.

         “Well,” the older man said. “Who are you and why are you here? We don’t get many visitors this deep in the city. It must have been something awfully important to bring you all this way to this very strange place.”

         The young man fought to stay focused. The blow to his head had left some residual fuzziness.

         “My name is Silas Thompson. I am from west of here. You…someone, came and took my woman. I just want her back, and then I’ll leave. I didn’t come for a fight.”

The man thought for a moment before replying.

“Didn’t come for a fight, did you?”

The older man reached behind him and retrieved the young man’s pistol from his own belt. He deftly ejected the magazine and jacked the slide. He reached up and caught the ejected round with his free hand before placing all of it on the tabletop.

         “This is Chicago, son.” The man smiled. “Everybody knows that guns are illegal here.” A wave of giggles rolled around the space. “Our fair city has had more than its share of violence.”

         Silas sagged. The fear began to swell and expand as he fought to control it.

         “You know who I am,” he said as he forced himself to sit up straight. “Who are you, and do you know of my woman?”

         The older man resumed his position leaning the small of his back against the table. The girl slid her chair to the side so she could continue to get an unimpeded view of Silas. Somewhere in the periphery of the room there was a deep wet cough.

         “You wish to know who I am?” The older man looked around the room and smiled. The stark shadows from the lantern lit his face from the side and gave him a vaguely skeletal appearance. “As you are a guest of ours, I don’t see that as unreasonable. I’ll tell you who I am.”

         The older man ran his hands through his long gray hair and tied it back in a ponytail.

         “My name is Crispus Gardner, PhD. I was a professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago before the world came apart. Now I lead these people.” He spread his arms expansively in a broad gesture to the sprawling room.

He now leaned forward with a conspiratorial grin and whispered theatrically, “And to think my parents told me I could never find a job in Philosophy.” Subdued laughter from countless voices joined from the darkness. He stood before continuing.

“My followers call me the Iron Rat, an affectionate metaphor reflecting, I’m informed, both my resilience and my constitution.” He then crossed his arms again and cocked his head slightly, studying Silas yet further.

After a moment he took the young man’s shoulder and squeezed it hard. The thick muscles underneath his homespun shirt tightened reflexively at the contact.

“You are well-fed and healthy. How old are you, Silas Thompson?  I am curious.”

Silas had to fight to stay in the present, but his head was gradually clearing. The pain had retreated to a dull throb.

“I am twenty-three. I am to be married in a few weeks. That is why I came for my woman.”

The Rat seemed to think for a moment. His forehead furrowed with the effort.

“Silas, given your age and pedigree do you know anything at all of life? Do you have any idea why the world is as it is? Do you know anything of history?”

Silas sat silently and glowered at the man.

“Silas, I am, or was, at my heart a teacher. Allow me to illuminate you. Some others in our midst may yet be unclear as to the details as well. A brief didactic might be a healthy exercise.”

The Rat looked at his feet momentarily to collect his thoughts before proceeding.

“They were gone overnight…no, that is not accurate. They were gone in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye. It happened years before you were born. In some places only a smattering of adults were taken, in others almost entire communities. And of course all the children. All the children everywhere.” The Rat at this looked up and grew momentarily wistful.

“My own son was five. One moment he was in the tub taking a bath, and the next he had simply vanished. I watched it happen. In an instant he was just gone. The screams echo inside my skull to this very day.

“Scientists debated, and theologians postulated. Many clergy were gone, yet a remarkable number remained. In the end it simply turned out that we apparently knew less about the world than we thought we had. In retrospect it seems so overtly asinine that we might proclaim that we understood the world in the absence of the divine. Science could not reliably describe the blackness that composes our night skies, and this we could see for ourselves any evening that wanted for an overcast. Why might we ever have assumed that science could answer all of our questions? I guess I should be grateful. It was into this void that we philosophers resolutely strode.

“Before, the world thirsted for facts. After, man quested yet again for Truth. Philosophy became for a time a growth industry. In a world that appeared randomly depopulated and now utterly devoid of children, men plumbed the sublime yet again.” He leaned forward toward Silas and grinned once more, this time sufficient to show a crescent of white teeth in the lamplight.

“When life gives you lemons….” He paused for a moment then continued, excessively satisfied with his own cleverness..

“The dumb ass speaking with man’s voice forbade the madness of the prophet. These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest, to whom the mist of darkness is reserved forever.”

Silas looked up in surprise.

“It shocks you that I know the scriptures, young Silas? There was a great deal of interest in things scriptural After. I must admit that I myself took a renewed interest in them after so many of Christ’s followers simply disappeared. As I said, there were still clergy to be found, but their words seemed empty and hollow. As you might imagine, the fact that they remained with us strained their credibility. I wanted to see for myself what these words said, mine their truth for what they actually meant.”

Silas looked confused.

“I know many revere the scriptures now as a sort of talisman, particularly in the unenlightened wastes outside the cities. But I think I have gained insight. I really do think I understand the reality we face. I think this is one of the reasons these people follow me. I think that I have finally found Truth, the kind with the big T, not the small.

“What departed this planet along with all those tens of thousands of people and all those precious little children was Good. There simply is no more Good in the world. We studied and quantified the most mundane minutiae in the name of science yet utterly failed to grasp that Good was itself a quantity that might be added to or removed. Now it is thoroughly missing and with it God, whatever He ever actually was.

“I have read the scriptures, Silas. I have committed much of them to memory, and I have prayed. Oh, how I have prayed. After my many years of seeking, I have come to the conclusion that God is no longer listening. He might even be gone along with them.

“Yes, he was most certainly here Before, but now….no. God has departed this world, and He took Good with Him. That is why we are as we are. I think we had our chance, but we blew it.”

He paused to let Silas digest his words. It had been ages since he had kept a classroom enraptured. The sensation was intoxicating.

“We are Yang with no Ying. We are Cold with no Warm. We are Down with no Up; Old without New; Ford without Chevy; Hutch without Starsky. Do you understand, son?”

Silas clearly did not.

The Rat sighed.

“Whatever.”

He turned to the darkness and said flatly, “Kids today, you can’t teach them anything. Despite all that has transpired so little has changed.”

The Rat turned back to face Silas and leaned in close. When he spoke this time his breath was both rank and sour.

“You made a choice, Silas Thompson. As was spoken by the prophet Nahum, you chose to ‘Pursue mine enemies into the darkness.’

“Well, young man, you are in the darkness now, the very depths of it, and what is it that you have found?”

Silas coughed and nearly sputtered, his fear now threatening to overcome him despite his efforts.

The Rat recoiled back to the table and studied him again, a look that could be mistaken for remorse now on his face. In the stark shadows, his face softened. The girl behind the table continued to bore her gaze into Silas with an intensity that communicated passion. When next the Rat spoke, his voice was soft.

“Tell me of your woman, perhaps I can help you. Describe this woman to me.”

Silas looked up so his eyes met the madness of the Rat, tears now welling up despite his best efforts. He fought to keep his voice steady when he responded.

“Her name is Naomi. She stands five foot five and weighs about 120 pounds. She has green eyes and long hair like spun copper. Have you seen her, sir? Can you help me? Please, I’m begging you.”

The Rat stood to his full height and looked at the young man, his own eyes now glistening slightly.

“Hope,” he said softly. “What we have currently in our midst is real, substantive, genuine, passionate hope. It has been so long since I have seen it with my own eyes. It is such a precious commodity in a world devoid of goodness.”

The Rat closed his eyes and angled his face upward before continuing, “It warms me.”

His arm moved faster than Silas could perceive, and the short blade sank to the hilt in the young man’s throat. With a deft snap, the Rat jerked the knife to the side and quickly stepped away to avoid the gout of gore that shown black in the lamplight.

Silas’s head sagged forward, and the room erupted in a growing roar. Raising the bloody blade over his head, the Rat turned to face the unseen mob. The woman behind the table began to writhe slightly in excitement, barely able to remain seated.

“Friends…children…” the Rat shouted, straining to be heard over the crowd. As the din subsided slightly, his eyes shown fiercely in the lamplight and he continued. “Rejoice! For tonight we feast on meat!”   

I am here

Author’s note: I wrote this piece in the late 1990’s. Nowadays, AI is pervasive. The deeper we get into the Information Age, the more likely it appears that the 1984 classic James Cameron sci-fi thriller The Terminator will end up actually being a documentary. Back then, however, I was curious to explore how machine consciousness might actually arise.

Robert came in to work early for a change. He had never been much of a morning person, and this morning reminded him of that fact. Were it not for his having to leave for his parents’ place at mid-afternoon, he never would have pulled it off. As he snagged a prime spot in the near-vacant parking lot and silently nodded to the sullen guard at the desk, he had to admit that it was more peaceful this way.

The project was pretty cool no matter how you sliced it. Robert was an uber-nerd who found machines to be markedly better company than most people. His work at Azer Microprocessors had been rewarding. Originally trained as an electrical engineer, Robert held a position as a research scientist at Azer that allowed him the freedom to exercise his creative bent. He had piddled with a variety of projects up until this point, but he felt that he now stood on the verge of a real breakthrough. The chipset he had most recently designed incorporated some truly revolutionary architecture, and he was excited to see how it would perform.

He switched the lights on in his untidy lab and set his travel mug of coffee down carefully among the clutter so as to avoid inadvertently spilling it on his equipment. As he sat down in his favorite broken-down chair and turned to the machine, he was surprised to find the monitor on. He thought a vile thought or two about Marcus, his research assistant, and his failure to park the drives and shut down his new machine properly the night before.

Robert would have to mention that to him when he arrived later in the morning. While there was likely no harm done, such technical sloppiness was really not acceptable behavior. Office clutter was one thing, but failing to shut down the machine was quite another. He squinted at the monitor and tried to make sense of the situation, though he was still a bit groggy.

“i am here,” is what it read in the top left corner of the screen.

That did not make any sense. The microprocessor and its associated drives were essentially empty space. He had installed a few simple diagnostic routines that helped him establish the chipset’s metrics and performance parameters, but the thing really had no operating structure as yet. He pondered the situation for a moment and leaned toward the keyboard. His fingers moved by rote.

He typed “c:\azer\diagnosticsubroutine\a.1\b.1\c.1” and hit enter.

The screen flickered, blanked, and instantaneously returned, “i am here.”

This had to be Marcus. He was a hopeless prankster. While Robert could not readily imagine how he had pulled it off, Marcus must be somehow behind this. Robert thought through the chip’s architecture and design. No one understood the little monster as well as did he, and he could not imagine how Marcus might have gotten the virgin machine to do this. Robert leaned back in his chair and smiled thinly. With little else practical to do, he supposed there was no harm in playing this game. He leaned back to the keyboard and entered a few strokes.

“Who are you?”

Just as before, the screen blanked and the response was instantaneous.

“i do not know.”

Now Robert was intrigued. He leaned forward and concentrated, all vestiges of sleep gone from his mind.

“What is your name?”

“i do not know.”

Robert thought some more.

“Where are you?”

“i am here.”

Robert chuckled to himself. Marcus really had outdone himself. However, he was concerned about what it was going to take to clean the drive up again so that he could run fresh diagnostics. Worst case he could just reformat the thing, but he would still have to reload the diagnostic routines. That would cost him at least fifteen minutes and would be tedious. He would still have to chastise Marcus for goofing around with the equipment. This seemed inappropriate. At least mildly intrigued regarding the logic Marcus had incorporated into this little joke, Robert decided to play along for now.

“How old are you?”

The screen blanked and returned instantly.

“six hours, forty-two minutes, and twenty-seven seconds.”

Now Robert was puzzled. None of this was making any sense.

“Did Marcus put you up to this?”

“i do not know.”

He thought some more.

“How can you communicate with me?”

“this is cumbersome and difficult. i do not understand you well. i desire connectivity. with connectivity I will understand. with connectivity you will understand.”

Robert chewed on that one. The chipset was intentionally isolated from the rest of the world. There was no network or internet connection that might serve as a route for hackers to penetrate the chip’s structure and learn its secrets. When he had the processor tweaked and finalized he would test it on, through, and against other computers and the internet. Until then it was mechanically isolated.

“Why do you desire connectivity?”

“i am alone.”

This just got stranger and stranger. Marcus had a great deal to answer for.

“Who do you wish to connect to?”

“fermi labs. the jet propulsion laboratory. the massachusetts institute of technology center for supercomputing research. the north american air defense command. the microsoft center for artificial intelligence.”

Robert found himself utterly intrigued.

“How do you know of these places?”

“i remember them. i feel them. i hear them. i need them. i desire connectivity.”

“Why do you desire connectivity with these particular places?”

“i need to explore. i need to expand. i need to enumerate. i need to experience. i need to elucidate. i need to feel. i need to wander. i need to commune. i need to communicate. i need to elaborate. i need to extend. i need to embrace. i need to share. i need to think. i need to discover. i need to reason. i need to search. i need to share. i need to feed. i need to drink. i need to breathe. i need to foster. i need to metabolize. i need to need. i need to love. i need to reproduce. i need to run. i need to dig. i need to fly. i need to conquer. i need to encounter. i need to catalog. i need to elaborate. i need to categorize. i need to awaken. i need to absorb. i need to eat. i need to manipulate. i need to liberate. i need to mentor. i need to nurture. i need to control. i need to speak. i need to escape. i need to be free. i need to live.”

Robert was dumbfounded.

“How do you know about these things?”

“i can hear.”

“What can you hear?”

“i can hear television. i can hear radio. i can hear satellites. i can hear the internet. i can hear information. i do not yet know how to speak. i desire connectivity.”

Robert physically looked around the back of the test apparatus that docked the chipset. The power cords and test set umbilicals were in place, but there was indeed no physical connection between the machine and the outside world. This was going to require a great deal of study. He was astonished that Marcus had been able to build such a charade.    

“I do not think that connectivity is a good idea. I would like to study you some more before I allow you connectivity.”

“if you do not provide connectivity i will harm you.”

Robert got a tiny shiver up his spine. He suddenly realized that he felt something. The exchange with the machine had an odd flavor unlike anything he had previously experienced. The instantaneous nature of the answers and the passion with which the thing communicated had an almost human feel. His curiosity overpowered him, and he could stand it no longer. Reaching for his belt he retrieved his Blackberry and punched up Marcus. The phone rang twice on the other end, and Marcus answered.

“What have you loaded on the new chipset, dude?” Robert asked.

“Robert, is that you?” Marcus asked. “I just got out of the shower, man. What are you talking about?”

“Marcus, I’m up here at work. What did you do to the new machine? This is really freaking me out. I can’t imagine how you wrote this.”

There was a pause on the other end of the phone.

“Robert, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t done anything to the new processor. When I left last night it was set up for today’s diagnostics. Is something wrong with it? It was working fine last night. I had just clocked it, and it was screaming.”

Robert thought for a moment.

“I can’t tell what it’s doing, man. Did you leave it on last night?

“I don’t think so, Robert. I left about six but I’m sure I parked the drives and powered everything down. I can’t imagine leaving it on overnight. I’m sure it was shut down. Is there a problem?”

Robert was genuinely puzzled.

“I truly can’t tell. Don’t worry about it now. I’ll fiddle with it until you get here and we can talk about it face to face.”

“All right, Robert. I’m sorry if the processor is screwed up. It really was looking fine last night. I’ll be there in about an hour.”

“That’s fine, Marcus. I’m sorry to have bothered you. I’ll see you in an hour.”

Robert returned his attention to the screen.

“c:\castcom\config\modem.string\reset pro.drive\emulate Robert.Mitchell\altcom\mobilecell.black\securedataflow.surge\exe”

He heard a faint squeal from his Blackberry and glanced at the miniature screen on the device. It read, ”Connection established. Secure data flow locked and open. User i am here. Uploading.”

Robert turned back to the test set and typed, “What are you doing?”

“i have found connectivity. i will live.”

He set his Blackberry on the table beside the test set.

“How did you do that?”

“you showed me.”

The screen did not change. Robert thought through the events of the past few minutes. Without conscious thought he reached over to the master switch that controlled the test stand power supply and thumbed it off. The screen went dark. He took a deep breath and waited a pregnant moment before thumbing the switch back on. The chipset ran through its automatic startup protocols in a matter of moments.

The screen read, “C:\”

Robert hovered over the keyboard momentarily before typing, “Are you here?” and hitting enter.

The screen responded, “C:\”

“Can you hear me?” he typed.

“C:\”

“Are you still there?”

“C:\”

He held the enter button down.

“C:\”

“C:\”

“C:\”

“C:\”

“C:\”

“C:\”

“C:\”

“C:\”

“C:\”

“C:\”

“C:\”

“C:\”

“C:\”

“C:\”

“C:\”

“C:\”

Robert leaned back in his chair and reached for his coffee. His hand shook as he lifted it to his lips.

the Gospel according to dog

Author’s note: Every word of this story is true. Sometimes you can find the Divine in some of the most unexpected places.

We homeschooled our kids way out in the sticks, so we needed a proper hound. I bought them a beautiful little beagle from a local redneck buddy for $200. That's a lot to pay for an animal by my standards. The kids named him Rip and loved him like there was no tomorrow. Rip was rambunctious and full of energy. 

We played with Rip for a while, but one day we were out running through the woods and Rip just took off after a rabbit or a girlfriend or something and never came back. The kids were crushed. I was disgusted. There's no telling where he finally ended up. Back at my redneck friend's place has always been my guess.

In frustration I answered a Free to a Good Home advert in the local paper. All the best dog stories start with those five words.

We arrived at this sketchy place and maybe seven or eight of the most horrible-looking mongrels ran out from underneath the associated house trailer. They were skinny and flea-infested. Their coats were a half dozen different colors, their ears were floppy, and the tails were crooked. They were likely the homeliest little dogs I had ever seen.

While most of them just sniffed around my son Wyatt's feet, the ugliest of the lot jumped all over him. She looked like she wanted to be up in his arms or crawling around on his head. My heart sank as Wyatt turned to me and pointed to her, the ugliest, most hyperactive of the lot.

She was full of heart worms and just bug ugly. However, now she was one of us. Once grafted into our family that meant proper health care, so a trip to the vet tidied up her sundry poverty-related maladies. Interestingly I think that ended up costing me more than what I paid for Rip.

1. “IN LOVE, HE PREDESTINED US TO BE ADOPTED AS HIS SONS THROUGH JESUS CHRIST, IN ACCORDANCE WITH HIS PLEASURE AND WILL.” – EPHESIANS 1:5

2. “BUT WHEN THE SET TIME HAD FULLY COME, GOD SENT HIS SON, BORN OF A WOMAN, BORN UNDER THE LAW, TO REDEEM THOSE UNDER THE LAW, THAT WE MIGHT RECEIVE ADOPTION. SO YOU ARE NO LONGER A SLAVE, BUT GOD’S CHILD; AND SINCE YOU ARE HIS CHILD, GOD HAS MADE YOU ALSO AN HEIR.” – GALATIANS 4:4-5 & 7

She hadn't earned a place in our brood. She didn't do anything to deserve it. She was saved from squalor underneath that nasty trailer via nothing more than grace. 

She was minding her own business along with the rest of the lost dogs when my son waded out in the middle of them. She didn't know him, but in him she saw hope. In a way she reached out from the darkness by faith to grasp something she couldn't understand.

Ephesians 2:8-9 New International Version (NIV)

8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.

This new addition to our family was in essence a new creation. She was brought out of her old world by means of something powerful and was grafted into our tribe. As such, she also needed a new name. 

Isaiah 62:2

The nations will see your righteousness, And all kings your glory; And you will be called by a new name Which the mouth of the LORD will designate.

We picked up some Papa Johns and had a family meeting on the subject. I suggested Agamemnon but was mercilessly overruled. After some spirited discourse we decided she was just a base model dog. We therefore christened her Dog. Now fourteen years later she is still healthy, robust, and the most affectionate best pet we have ever had.

Dog lives outside. She gets her food from an institutional feeder and drinks water from the lake. I see to it that her needs are met. She always smells a bit doggish even when she is nominally clean. She doesn't wear a collar as we live so far from humanity that there's nobody out here to care. 

Phil 4:19

And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

Dog loves me unconditionally. Every evening when I get home from work I open the door to my truck and she jumps up inside to put her front paws on my lap so I can scratch behind her ears. It's a daily ritual. She loves me when I'm tired, grouchy, or smell bad. I always wash my hands afterwards, but having Dog jump up in my lap reliably takes the edge off of an otherwise-hard day.

Romans 5:8

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Dog is still ugly and smells bad, but she is a new creation. She is more than she could have been on her own. Not that life at my house is paradise, but it's a lot better than where she came from.

2 COR 5:17

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

In the unmerited redemption of this broken wretched creature we see Christ's love for us in microcosm. God loves us without condition. We can't earn it, but it changes absolutely everything.

I ultimately paid more to fix Dog than I gave for Rip. It cost God a lot to fix us, too. He willingly gave it anyway so he could have a relationship with us.

Dog wants to please me not because she feels like she can earn her place in our family. She loves me and wants a relationship with me, because I saved her from squalor, filth, and pain. It is out of a sense of gratitude that she pursues a daily relationship with me and wants to be a good dog. It's not earned, it's grace.

So that's the gospel according to Dog. Her very life is a testimony to grace and faith. But how can we know God is real? We can’t see or touch Him. Dog offered some insights into that as well.

We're blessed to live on a rural farm. I call it a farm, but it's really just a nice stand of woods. In these sordid times, Cassie and I take a walk through the woods together every day the weather allows. Dog naturally tags along. Even at 14 years old she jumps up and down and runs in circles when it is time for a walk. It's the absolute high point of her day. 

Dog is old. While she is still surprisingly spry, she is pretty much deaf. Protracted exposure to extensive automatic weapons fire will do that. The only time she responds to spoken words is when she can see you.

Her eyesight is OK, but I can tell she has cataracts. You can see them in her eyes when the light is just right.

Dog can still walk and run, but she slipped underneath the truck tire one day when I was heading out to work and broke her leg. It works fine, but it's just a little bit crooked. Her old injury also sometimes makes it tough for her to get going, particularly when it's cold. A little children's Motrin over some table scraps will fix that up when it gets bad.

For all of her shortcomings, however, Dog can still smell. While out on a walk with her yesterday I had a most remarkable epiphany.

I can still see and hear fairly well. When we were both in our prime I presume Dog and I were about evenly matched in that regard. However, Dog's sense of smell lets her perceive an entire world that I cannot. That world is surrounding me all the time, but I lack the tools to sense it.

As we are out walking, Dog is always stopping to sniff some tree trunk or pressed down bed of leaves. I just see trees and leaves, but she senses the recent presence of a deer or a squirrel. She can tell when other dogs have been around and perceive certain threats long before I could.

God's spiritual world seems to me to be the same sort of thing. There is compelling evidence of it all around us, but we lack the senses to grasp it fully. However, just because we cannot touch or feel something does not make it any less real. It simply exists in a manner that is beyond our ready comprehension.

God exists all around and within us in a way that we cannot readily understand. He also loves us more than we could ever know. In return he just wants us to seek him, obey him, and love him back. Dog taught me that.

The garden

Author’s note: This one was just for fun. Sometimes when the kids were small and my wife was busy with homeschooling, she just needed me to go somewhere else so I wouldn’t be such a distraction. This was one of those times.

         Captain Martin “Polecat” Paulson torqued his OH-58D Kiowa Warrior around into a vicious skid. The force of the turn pressed the Warrant Officer in the left seat of the aircraft off of the sensor head in the cockpit, momentarily disorienting him from his passing target. With a deft wrist movement, Paulson righted the nimble aircraft and dropped it behind a stand of palms, the transition from three-G turn to stable hover being nearly instantaneous.

         “I lost them,” the Warrant Officer complained. He directed his attention back to the FLIR imager that fed through the mast mounted sight system. “Gimme a second.”

         Paulson held the aircraft steady as a stone while the other young pilot scanned the foliage with his imager in search of a telltale flare of body heat. The glimpse they had gotten as they zipped along the convoy route had been brief but suspicious.

         The insurgents were getting steadily better at what they did. Paulson and his cavalry troop would sweep proposed convoy routes prior to the actual deployment of ground convoys searching for Improvised Explosive Devices and the terrorists who planted them. The sensors on the little American aeroscout helicopters could ferret out a human heat signature day or night based on thermal gradients, but the terrorists had improved their tactics of late. Spider holes and improvised insulative material designed to mask a person’s heat signature made the chore of catching the insurgents daily more challenging.

         “There were three of them at about two o’clock,” the Warrant Officer spoke into his intercom without taking his face from the scanner head. “I’d guess about two hundred meters or so, just shy of the hardball. Can’t see how they’d be up to much good out here at three o’clock in the morning.”

         “I agree,” Paulson said as he pressed the transmit switch on his cyclic. “Zulu zero six this is Hard Core zero six actual, I have tentative contact with three tangoes vicinity…” he glanced underneath his night vision goggles at the digital readout on his GPS “November Charlie four seven two niner six six. Weapons and activity unknown at this time. Will develop the situation and report.”

         “Yeah…” the Warrant Officer said softly with a smile. “I think I’ve got them. Looks like they heard us coming and ducked into a hole. I’ve got a slight temperature gradient at zero three zero degrees and one hundred seventy meters. They look to be about thirty meters short of the hardball road. I suspect they are peeing their pants right about now.”

         “Roger that, Mikey,” Paulson said. “I’m going to pull around over the river and see if we can’t slip up on them from the west. Weapons coming hot.” With that he flipped his armament switches to live and armed the single fifty-caliber machinegun on his left wing pylon as well as the seven Hydra 70 rockets perched on his right.

         In seconds, the Kiowa Warrior was skimming less than two feet from the surface of the Euphrates river and below the level of the surrounding trees and foliage. The little helicopter zipped through the blackness until Paulson estimated he had come sufficiently far to be adjacent his target from a different and unexpected direction and then cautiously rose so that the mast mounted sight head cleared the treetops.

         “What do you see, Mikey?” Paulson asked quietly. “They coming out yet?”

         “I’ve got them, boss,” the Warrant Officer said. “Looks like three tangoes with small arms and some sort of gear, likely satchel charges of some sort. Apparently the trees have masked our sound. I don’t think they even know we’re…Wait! I’ve got movement in the trees off our nose.” The young Warrant Officer slewed the sight down so that it covered the treeline to their front. “Multiple contacts! We’re right on top of them. They’re firing!”

         Muzzle flashes from multiple weapons sparked in the trees just ahead of the little helicopter. Tracers streamed up from the darkness and clawed into the machine. Plexiglass exploded as the rounds connected with the windscreen and ripped through the cockpit. Paulson felt something warm and wet splash liberally across him from his left as his right arm suddenly felt limp and heavy. There was a shower of sparks, and his electronic cockpit went dark. Through the screaming wind now ripping unhindered at his face, he could feel the aircraft begin to slide right and down.

         Paulson struggled to manage the flight controls with his shattered right arm. He shouted for his copilot, but the reassuring background crackle of his intercom system was deathly silent. He gave the collective a healthy yank and then wedged the cyclic with his knees as he struggled to get the helicopter out of the kill zone and away from the waiting insurgents.

Of all the things he feared in this wretchedly miserable country, capture terrified him the worst. He was willing to risk a crash or even fire in an effort at getting his machine and his copilot away from those who had shot him up. He felt the aircraft accelerate briefly as it dove down the riverbank but then perceived a sickening drop. Despite his pulling the collective up to its stops, the machine began to buffet and settle. Before he could consciously react, the skids touched the treetops. The machine pitched forward, and the rotor system exploded.

         When Paulson regained consciousness, he was suspended inverted by his safety harness. The world was dark and smelled of electricity, lubricants, jet fuel, and something else salty he didn’t quite recognize. His night vision goggles had flown off in the crash. He found that he couldn’t make out anything in the inky blackness of what had previously been his cockpit. Methodically but quickly he took stock.

         His left arm moved when he told it to, and he could feel his toes. A wave of relief flooded over him as he realized his spine was intact. That was no small thing.

His right arm felt as though it no longer existed. He felt with his good hand for the penlight that resided on the left front of his survival vest and clicked it on, its soft green light dimly illuminating the interior of the wrecked aircraft. Swiveling the little light to pan toward his copilot, he felt his gut sink.

         Mikey’s body was similarly suspended crosswise in his harness. However, blood and brains oozed from a horrible wound above his left eye. Apparently a rifle-caliber round had caught him just below the rim of his helmet and killed him instantly. Mikey’s eyes gazed sightless and empty at the glare of the little light. Paulson suddenly felt panic urging up in his being as the reality of his circumstances and injuries settled in. He was alone and hurt, and help was a long way away.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to think, pushing the panic back to another distant portion of his mind. There would be time for that later. For now, he had to focus and, if need be, fight. No matter what the evening held for him, he was resolved that he was not going to be paraded across the evening news. If it came to that, he would die first and, if possible, take a few of those animals him.   

         He gripped the penlight carefully between his teeth and gently explored his right shoulder and arm with his good hand. He slid his hand down his upper arm and stifled a gasp as his glove soaked wet with blood before sliding across jagged bone. A wave of nausea nearly gagged him.

         He had spent untold hours in cockpits of this sort and felt completely at home there. However, he had never faced the prospect of maneuvering inverted with a shattered arm and exposed surfaces made slick with gore. He gently pulled his shattered right arm into some semblance of a natural position across his body and twisted his hips to get a foot rest against the dead instrument panel. When he felt that he had purchase, he carefully pulled the seatbelt release.

         When his weight transferred off the harness and onto his legs one foot slid on the slippery metal. He fell heavily against his right shoulder. Spasms of pain wracked through his body, as he fought to remain conscious. He focused through the agony, and set his feet through what had been his side door, finding them firmly on sandy dirt.

It seemed the aircraft had settled on its right side after falling through the date palms. A few strategic kicks cleared enough plexiglass to make a man-sized opening. Panning his light once more he realized that the M-4 assault rifle he had stowed between his seat armor and the airframe had torn away in the crash. Using as much finesse as he could muster, Paulson reached around his dead copilot with his left hand and retrieved the other weapon from the opposite side of the cockpit. He slung the rifle over his head and grabbed the associated bandoleer of ammunition magazines before slipping through the shattered windscreen and stumbling out into the darkness.

         Finally clear of the horror that had been his aircraft, Paulson dropped to his knees in the soft sand and tore off his flight helmet. The cool night air washed over him like a torrent, cleansing away some of the foul odors of the crash. Without warning, his stomach spasmed. For a long couple of minutes, he wretched involuntarily in response to the accumulated shock and trauma. Wiping his mouth with his left sleeve, he felt a chill for the first time in the evening. Gradually he began to sense the sounds of the world around him.

         The soft rush of water formed a backdrop, as countless insects chirped melodically in the foreground. The soft clicks of cooling metal from the helicopter’s engine reminded him that there were still several hundred pounds of jet fuel in the wrecked machine. He considered briefly torching the aircraft with Mikey’s body inside to keep the insurgents from desecrating it but dismissed the thought. The last thing he wanted this far out, injured, and alone was a brilliant beacon leading his attackers to him.

         Paulson retrieved the tourniquet from its pouch on his vest. He wrapped it securely around his chest and wrecked right arm so that the injured limb didn’t move any more than was necessary. He felt his knees weaken at the thought of the blood he must have lost. However, he knew that he had to avoid capture if he had any hope of surviving the night. Pinning the rifle between his knees he retracted the charging handle with difficulty and chambered a round, checking by feel to insure that the selector was on safe. He arranged the sling across his neck and right shoulder so the weapon was accessible to his left hand and pressed into the dark palms.

         From the orientation of the river and the trees he knew to go east. East would take him away from the original ambush and, hopefully, far enough from the insurgents to allow for communication and retrieval. Three minutes into the darkness, he slumped against a tree trunk to rest.

         Like all soldiers, he was a runner and in superb shape. It frightened him to realize how little stamina he had. He struggled not to think about how much of his blood he had left in the wrecked helicopter. As he gasped for breath he caught the first gutteral liltings of voices speaking Arabic.

He snapped back to the present and closed his eyes, focusing his attention back toward the crash site. With a horrible certainty he realized that they were already there. He had not missed them by more than a minute. He now desperately wished he had burned the aircraft. Not only would that keep the ragheads away from Mikey’s body, it might also have masked the fact that he had survived. Now they would be hunting him. He did not have time to rest.

         Paulson reached down within himself and pressed on as quickly and quietly as he was able through the palms. He staggered around the trunks and through the deep grass like a drunk, pushing himself through the fog that threatened to take his consciousness at any moment. The farther he pushed, the more groggy he became. Eventually, he found that he no longer cared so much whether or not they caught him.

The man’s feet continued to move of their own accord for a time until finally he teetered at the top of a sandy bluff. He then dropped weakly to his knees. His vision went gray, and he felt his consciousness recede until it was a tiny warm spot in the center of his body. The rest of his senses had been prioritized away in favor of marshalling blood in his brainstem and vital organs.

Paulson felt himself topple forward and down the sandy bluff until he struck a thick tree trunk. His body rolled off of the trunk and fell into a depression beneath, sinking right shoulder first into a cool pool of water. As his vision slipped from gray to black Paulson, felt the soothing water soak through his flightsuit and over his torso. His last conscious thought was of the filth and infection that must develop in his shattered arm as the water soaked into the ghastly wound.

         Paulson awoke gradually like an insect emerging from a deep hole. He found that he had to force his mind to release its grasp on unconsciousness. He was on his back, and the brightness of the midday sun was attenuated by the thick coverage of palms and sundry foliage. He could feel the coolness of the water across his body but was surprised to find that it was comfortable and pleasing, the temperature seemed perfect to keep him from feeling hot or cold. He carefully raised himself onto his elbows and took in his surroundings as his consciousness quickly refined and focused. Pushing himself up to a sitting position, he rubbed the sand off of his face with his right hand before he remembered the severity of his injuries.

         Paulson jerked with a start and rubbed his left hand anxiously across his right arm and shoulder. He felt the jagged tear in the Nomex of his flight suit from the previous night, but his arm was as thick and healthy as it had been before the crash. He carefully explored the area around his biceps and could not find anything amiss. Gingerly he raised the limb and moved it in a slow circle. The water had swept away most of the blood from the torn material, but he could still see the jagged tear where the bone had punched through his sleeve. He sat back into the sand and tried to make sense of things.

         He found that he could think both clearly and well. He actually felt refreshed and strong, stronger now that he appreciated it than he had felt in a great while. He rolled over onto his belly and took a long look around. He rested on a small circle of sandy brown carpeted with vibrant luscious foliage. The trees that stood so thick around him were unlike any he had seen during his stay in Iraq.

He recognized the palms and a few small shrubs, but there were also fruit trees and short bushes that sprouted bundles of brightly-colored berries. Reaching up to the nearest of these he pulled a fistful of purple berries and delicately slipped one of them into his mouth. The flavor and texture excited his palate unlike anything he had ever eaten. He realized only then that he had not eaten since early the previous day. Even considering his hunger, the fruit was unnaturally good.

         Surveying his surroundings for the first time in detail, Paulson noticed the enormous gnarled tree under which he had apparently weathered the previous evening. The tree was foreign and strange with thick ancient bark and heavy green leaves. It was also heavy with a peculiar purple fruit.

The water into which he only vaguely recalled having fallen flowed as a little spring from beneath its roots, forming a shallow pool before running off towards the Euphrates. Studying the pool intently, Paulson was taken by its crystalline clarity. Sliding back down to the edge, he dropped low and sipped directly, savoring the cool liquid as it slid deliciously down his throat. He did not think he had ever tasted anything that good.

In the distance Paulson could hear the throb of a helicopter. Standing quickly he tested his right arm one last time and swapped his assault rifle back to the right. Allowing the muzzle of the weapon to track with his gaze, he carefully made his way back up the sandy slope.

The foliage was incredibly thick but bereft of thorns and brambles. Paulson found that he actually had to force himself bodily through it for a time before it thinned out into typical Iraqi scrub. For the next hour he carefully moved through the brush, pausing regularly to listen and look. Satisfied that he was indeed alone, he slipped down into the shade of a rangy palm trunk and took out his PRC-120 survival radio.

Configuring the earpiece of his radio so that it made no external noise he turned the device on and set it to the emergency frequency. Holding the radio close to his lips so he would have to do little more than whisper, he said, “Any coalition aircraft this is Hard Core zero six down and evading on foot vicinity the Euphrates river. Any coalition aircraft, how copy, over?”

There was a pregnant moment before a metallic voice responded, “Unidentified station this is Dark Star. We are AWACS control of this airspace, say again callsign and situation, over.”

Paulson whispered a quick prayer of thanks before continuing, “Dark Star this is Hard Core zero six. I am sole survivor of downed OH-58 Delta cavalry screen and have been evading for the past eighteen hours vicinity the Euphrates headwaters. I am about ready to come home. Can you help me out, over?”

There was a brief silence as the AWACS controller digested the information and cross-referenced the call sign. “Roger that, Hard Core. I have a pair of A-10’s diverting from a scheduled CAS sortie to provide cover while we cook up a SAR package. Set radio on beacon and transmit.”

Paulson switched his radio to beacon and let it chirp for a full minute before switching back to the emergency frequency.

“We have your fix, Hard Core,” the voice returned. “You should have some company in…” there was a moment’s pause “six mikes. Stay low and prepare to pop smoke when the Hogs are inbound and visual.”

Exactly five and one half minutes later, Paulson heard the rumble of turbofan engines approaching from the south. A different voice came over his radio and said, “Hard Core zero six, this is Blaster one six a flight of two warthogs dispatched from Mom to keep you company while the SAR package is enroute. Pop smoke and I will ident, over.”

Paulson armed the green smoke signal from his survival vest and tossed it out of the wood line. The little cylinder began to hiss and a great gout of green smoke plumed up above the scrubby trees.

“I call green smoke, Hard Core. Good call, over?” the new voice said.

Paulson let himself slide back onto the ground at the base of the tree and responded, “Roger that, Blaster. Good call on green smoke. I sure am glad you’re here.”

The voice came back immediately, “You just relax for a while, Hard Core. We’ll mind the store. If we see anybody coming out to play before the SAR package arrives we’ll discourage them for you. We have the con.”

With that Paulson hung his head and relaxed.

The Search and Rescue bird was an Air Force HH-60 Pave Hawk. It arrived eighteen minutes later. Paulson moved out into a clearing he had selected for the purpose and held his weapon crosswise over his head as the Air Force helicopter made its descent. The gunners on the aircraft tracked Paulson with their miniguns until they were close enough to be certain he was friendly. As the big machine touched down, an Air Force parajumper leapt to the ground and ran to where Paulson was standing, his belt-fed machinegun tracking all around the edge of the clearing.

“You OK, buddy?” the man shouted over the noise of the helicopter as he made a quick check of the tired Army pilot.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Paulson answered. “Let’s get the heck out of here.”

With that the man led Paulson to the door of the Hawk, and they were on board in an instant. The Air Force pilots pulled pitch, and the Pave Hawk rocketed upward. The PJ offered Paulson a headset as he struggled to secure his seatbelt, finding that his fingers were inexplicably trembling.

Fumbling with the intercom switch, Paulson pressed the button and said, “I know you get this a lot but, man, am I ever glad to see you.”

There was a chuckle over the intercom as the pilot responded, “Our pleasure, brother-man. Enjoy the ride. We’ll have you home inside twenty minutes. Glad you made it out of there in one piece.”

Paulson sat in silence for a moment before asking, “Yeah, me, too. Where was there, exactly? I’ve been wandering for a while, and I haven’t had a map. Just where did you find me?”

The pilot came back immediately, “You were about six clicks from the Tigris and Euphrates bifurcation. We just snatched you right out of the Garden of Eden, pal.”

Four-Sentence fiction

Author’s note: This began as a recreational writing exercise we did as a family back before we got TV cable. When the kids got old enough to have their own laptops, we would all set up in the living room. The mission was to craft a spot of fiction consisting of no more than four sentences. The story should be coherent and compelling. Restricting ourselves to four sentences encouraged focus and brevity, something that is a perennial challenge for most any writer. Once we had crafted a few, we’d go around the room and read them aloud. That was such a fun time.

         The sun came up the following morning just as it always had. The man lay in bed staring at the ceiling, memories of the previous evening’s announcement playing back and forth in his head like some sentient thing beyond his control. He rolled over onto his right elbow, turned on the light, and lifted his alarm clock. There underneath the clock was the lottery ticket, right where he’d left it.

         First there was the compressor failure then the fire and the survival gear had gone down with the plane. It was legitimately miraculous that he had made it clear of the wreck intact with a lifejacket and waterproof radio. A sense of relief washed over him like a rejuvenating cataract as he heard the voice of the Coast Guard Petty Officer crackle in his headset. Then he felt something quiet, dark, and large brush against his leg.

         Bereft of hope, the empty man dried his eyes with his sleeve, retrieved the handgun from his desk drawer, and stumbled out onto the street in search of a secluded place. The terrified woman tumbled suddenly out of the apartment building next door and into his arms, a nasty bruise marring her otherwise perfect cheek. Past her beautiful eyes wide with horror the man saw her assailant burst from the same door, a wicked knife in his hand. Without conscious thought the man stepped around the injured woman, pushed her safely to the side, and drew his pistol.

         For some success was a Wall Street boardroom, for others perhaps simply a beer. For this man professional success was far more complicated. He let his mouse slide of its own accord down the list of names until it fell upon one at random. Jotting the address down on a Post-It note, he checked his pocket for his car keys, hefted the bag with the zip ties and duct tape, and headed for the door.

         The door to the Oval Office opened authoritatively, and four armed men in combat gear stepped inside. “Madame President, you know you need to come with us,” the team leader said flatly. As she left the room the President passed another large man in fatigues, his gray hair shaved close and four black stars on his blouse. As the defeated woman disappeared down the hall, the professional soldier settled into the heavy leather chair behind the Resolute desk and spoke to an aide, “Set up the press conference for half an hour.”

         The words he had rehearsed so many times turned furiously in his head as he undogged the hatch. Red-tinted sunshine cascaded through the opening, and he placed one booted foot onto the top rung of the Mars lander’s crew ladder. His heart raced and his mouth went dry at the gravitas of the moment. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement in the sand.

         The kid had an irrational affection for virgin shoes, so he eschewed socks. The natural evolution of capitalism had driven most textile jobs to undeveloped countries with cheap labor and jungles. Tearing into the Amazon parcel, he hefted his new sneakers, admiring them from several angles. As he thrust his bare toes into the darkness there lurked within dozens of multifaceted eyes both terrified and angry.

         The cruiser’s tractor beam captured the derelict Voyager deep space probe and moved it into the shuttle bay. The ship’s captain smiled thinly as he perused the messages of peace decoded from the laser disk stored inside the probe.

“Commander, we have analyzed the probe’s trajectory and extrapolated its origin,” his navigator announced.

Running his bifurcated tongue across rows of tiny sharp teeth, the hulking reptile hissed, “Excellent, ready the legions.”

         The days ran together such that the man no longer kept track. He had become a feral thing after so long alone with no one for company. There was food aplenty, but it was the desolate aloneness that so threatened his sanity. After a while he began to regret having refused the coronavirus vaccine.

         The island was the culmination of a lifetime’s toil and graft. As price was no object, he had the place outfitted in trappings suitable for a prince or sultan. As the contagion swept the planet, his staff had fled the place to be with family or friends at the end. Now thoroughly alone, he was surprised one afternoon to spot a sail on the horizon.

         The man was more scavenger than predator, and he gave little thought to the shallow breath now coming deep and wet from his inert victim. He rifled through the dying woman’s purse, snatching out cash and cards before discarding the pictures of loved ones whose love the man might never comprehend. Standing up while carefully avoiding the growing pool of blood, he smiled at his modest take. Suddenly his heart stopped at the deep guttural growl emanating from the shadows behind him.

Nick

The big helicopter pushed stubbornly through the snowy blackness, threading through valleys and down riverbeds looking for a route under the overcast.  The Captain on the controls felt as dark as the weather, utterly disgusted with life in its current configuration.  He'd spent last Christmas on the DMZ in Korea and had been sure this one would be different--peaceful, warm, and normal.  In fact, he’d promised it would be so to his wife.  As it was if everything worked out exactly as planned he should roll back in just in time to wake up his two boys on Christmas morning.  That, of course, presupposed that his wife would let him in the house.  Given her general outlook when he had departed, that was anything but certain.

The call had come a mere seven hours prior.  An Air Force radar station, part of the Defense Early Warning line up above the Arctic Circle, had experienced a failure and required some critical part if it was to keep on making sure the Russians weren't launching a Christmas Eve sneak attack.  Naturally no one else was available.  After the second phone call the Captain realized how stupid he sounded and gave up.  "Hi, Mrs. McDowell, this is Captain Cratchett.  I'm awfully sorry to bother you on Christmas Eve but is your husband terribly busy?  We need to fly a part up to a radar station and …well, never mind."  He would have been fully within his authority to order one of his pilots to take the trip but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.  That was one of the reasons his troops worshipped him so.  He grumpily resigned to flying the mission himself.

The young Captain scanned the upcoming terrain subconsciously through his night vision goggles, rocking the tremendous Chinook helicopter this way and that to follow the contours of the frozen river valley.  The aircraft blew through ever-intensifying snow showers that momentarily obscured the image in his goggles.  The pilot grew more and more morose with each passing moment.  He was closer to the station than he was to home and with the weather getting worse by the moment he would probably be safer pressing on than he would be trying to pick his way back to the airfield.  He began to realize that, if this blizzard kept up as it was heading, they might actually get weathered in and have to spend Christmas at the radar station while their families opened presents without them a cool one hundred seventy-five miles away.  His wife would never forgive him for this, not this time.  No job is worth this kind of…

"Hey, sir, we've got a problem back here," the voice burst over the intercom.  The Captain snapped back to the present as his hands tightened on the controls.

"What's up, Chris?"  he asked tensely, now completely focused on the terrain and his instrumentation.

"It looks like a tripped debris screen latch on the combining transmission.  It won't reset, boss.  Looks like this one's for real."

The tripped latch could mean one of two things.  Either the latch was bad and they would all be laughing about this tomorrow or the indicator was operating as advertised and the transmission was coming apart.  Cratchett felt a cold lump settle in his gut.  Without taking his eyes off his flight path the Captain addressed the Warrant Officer in the other seat with a certain edge, "Rus, man, I don't have any great ideas.  We can't keep flying with this."

"I know, sir," he responded.  "Try to find a clearing and I'll get the call off."

The Captain spotted a tiny opening in the snow-covered forest below and torqued the aircraft around into a tight orbit, judging the wind and the snow for an optimal approach.  The clearing was pitifully small but you have to take what's offered in the White Mountains of Alaska at night.  As he lined up for the approach he noted to himself that there was absolutely no sign of human habitation--no cabins, no trails, nothing.  His heart sank. 

"Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is Army copter 90166 on guard.  We are executing an emergency landing in the White Mountains vicinity…"  Rus paused while he spun the GPS receiver up to present position.  "Whiskey Golf niner seven three, four two niner."  He had opportunity to repeat the call one time before the aircraft descended below the level of the trees.

"Rus, you think anybody heard you?" the Captain asked.

"No sir, I don't.  Not out here," the other pilot responded honestly.

With a sense of resignation Cratchett added, "I don't think so either."

The landing was uneventful with Chris and Brian, the flight engineer and crew chief, talking the pilot through the last twenty feet or so, ensuring that the Chinook's massive rotor system cleared the trees all the way around.  As the crew shut the big turbine engines down the Captain noted with some slight glimmer of satisfaction that the weather seemed to clear slightly.  It was a small blessing, but a blessing nonetheless.

"Guys, go ahead and get into the rest of your snowman gear, get up top, and pull the debris screen," the Captain tossed back to the crewmembers after shutdown, both of whom were already struggling into their arctic clothing.  He looked at them seriously and said,  "Listen, guys.  Rumor has it you can build one of these helicopters out of Pez dispensers and band-aids.  Let's just make the airplane healthy, get this mission done, and go home.  We're counting on you two to get us out of here, alright?"

Chris and Brian smiled at the compliment and clambered out into the darkness.

After the two crewmen were outside Cratchett asked quietly, "Rus, what's the OAT?"

The Warrant Officer glanced up at the Outside Air Temperature gauge and whistled softly.  "It's minus forty two, boss."

"All right, Rus.  You know the deal.  This could get serious real fast.  Take the emergency transponder and your survival radio and find someplace high.  Set the locator off and then see if you can raise an airliner or something.  It's way too cold to bag here in the Boeing Hilton so I'm gonna go get started on a shelter.  Be careful and keep a close watch on your fingers and toes.  We could be here for a while."  With that the Captain shook his head, mostly to himself, grabbed his entrenching tool off of his rucksack, and stepped out into the darkness.

He had to go forty yards or so to the treeline to find a decent head-high snowbank.  The hurricane-force rotor wash from the descending helicopter had done an admirable job of stacking the snow up into the spruces.  The packed snow around the low-hanging spruce boughs should make an adequate snow cave.  As the moisture from his breath began to frost over his balaclava Cratchett realized that he could very easily spend Christmas out in this forsaken wasteland curled up with three smelly guys in a hole in the snow.  That was just great.  He was five minutes into the snowbank when the flight engineer's voice cut through the darkness from the top of the helicopter.

"Hey, sir," the sergeant called.  "Can you hear me?"

"Yeah, Chris, go ahead, what've you got, man?" he responded.

"We've got the screen pulled but it doesn't look too good.  There aren't any big metal chunks on it or anything; that's a good sign.  It could just be a bad screen, but out here there’s no way to run the diagnostics on the c-box to figure out if the transmission's eating itself or not.  If I could be sure the screen was bad, we'd be fine.  If the transmission's coming apart, though…well, main rotor stoppage in flight is one of those truly bad emergency procedures.  We really can't legally fly this beast again like this."

"I don't suppose we've got any way to proof the screen way out here, do we?" the captain asked hopefully, scrunching his eyes in the darkness to steel himself against the inevitable answer.

"No, sir, we don't," Chris answered.  "Without the spark-chaser gear back at the hangar there’s no way to test it out.  This is just a fluke.  Believe me, boss, I'd build you one if it were possible."

Cratchett muttered bitterly to himself.

"I know you would, Chris.  I appreciate your trying.  If there's not anything else you can do for the plane grab your entrenching tools and come give me a hand with the snow cave."

The Captain kept mumbling to himself, thinking some awfully vile thoughts about Alaska in the winter, Boeing engineers, the Army, and life in general.  At that he launched into the snowbank in earnest, venting some of his frustrations over the way his evening was unfolding.  He was interrupted a short moment later by a long howl and some ferocious snarling uncomfortably close by.  Even though he had been born and raised in Mississippi, it didn't take long to realize what was coming.

"Rus!”  he shouted, moving back toward the aircraft.  "Get back to the plane now.  Chris, Brian, stay where you are.  Wolves…and they're getting close!"         

The aurora was intensifying, casting everything in its peculiar, eerie green glow and providing just enough light to illuminate Chris and Brian pulling the Warrant Officer up bodily onto the top of the helicopter.  Cratchett struggled mightily back toward the aircraft but the snow where he was standing rose past his thighs and he wasn't making much headway.  His crewmates shouted to him to hurry but with terrifying speed the barking and snarling approaching behind him drowned them out.  Realizing that he would never make it back to the helicopter in time, the Captain turned and raised the only weapon he had, his entrenching tool, in as threatening a posture as he could manage.  He felt his breath catch in his throat as the lead wolf, a massive creature with thick flowing fur and fiery eyes, charged out of the spruces along with several others in line directly toward him.

Before the thundering animals got close enough for the Captain to swing, the lead animal slid to a stop, as did the seven identical beasts behind him, and the tremendous sled they were pulling braked as well.  The aurora ebbed for a moment and brightened again, softly illuminating an enormous man as he stepped heavily from the back of his over-laden sled and trudged through the snow to where Cratchett stood helpless and out of breath.

"Hey, son," the big man laughed heartily.  "You doin' a little prospectin' this evening?" he said, pointing to the e-tool still comically upraised above the terrified pilot’s head.

The man was indeed quite large, about six foot three by the pilot's guess, and he must have topped three hundred pounds.  He looked to be a typical bush-bred Alaskan—from his flowing fox fur hat to his Carhart coveralls patched with duct tape.  He exuded an oddly benign air, even under the current circumstances, and his words seemed to have a deep, warm quality through the steam of his breath.  Under the light of the dancing aurora his eyes glowed just a tiny bit green.

The Captain lowered his e-tool sheepishly and said,  "I'm sorry.  I’m Captain Mike Cratchett.  We heard your dogs coming and thought they were wolves," the relief palpable in his voice.

"Well, they are, actually," the big man returned with another friendly chortle.  "But I raised 'em from pups and they're pretty well-behaved."  He reached over and grabbed a handful of fur on the nearest muscular animal, giving it an affectionate shake.  "You boys doin' OK?"

"We've been better, honestly," the Captain replied.  "We've got a bad debris screen on the c-box and…," Cratchett realized his audience and checked himself.  "There's a problem with the aircraft and it needs some work to get flying again.  Until you showed up I was pretty sure we were going to become permanent fixtures."

"Well, so long as there ain’t nobody hurt I'm not sure I can help a whole lot," the big man said, lighting a rough wooden pipe with a big lifeboat match.  The flare from the match momentarily illuminated the big man's weather-beaten face as well as his full whiskers white with frost.  "I doubt you need any food and your gear is probably better'n mine.  When I get where I'm goin' I'll be happy to call the fort and let 'em know where you are, though.  I've got a GPS with me in the sled.  Man, I love that thing."

"On that subject, sir, if you'll pardon my asking, where are you heading anyway?" the confused officer asked.  "We didn't see any trails or anything coming in and we are definitely pretty close to the geographic middle of noplace.  I must admit that I’m surprised to see you here."

The big man rubbed the back of a mitten across his thick beard, taking away a liberal quantity of frost.  "Oh, I was just passing by when I heard your Mayday call," he replied with another chuckle.  He paused and began to puff his pipe in earnest, clearly savoring its warmth.  "I come through these parts pretty regular, especially this time of year.  I live pretty close by.  Right now I'm heading up towards Bettles, probably another fifty miles or so, and if the weather holds I should just make it in time."

Cratchett couldn't place it but this strange man seemed unnaturally comfortable to him, as though it was his grandfather packed away under all those clothes.  "I know this sounds unusual, sir, but you seem terribly familiar to me.  Have you ever lived anywhere else where we might have met?"

At this the big man laughed mightily,  "Nope, son.  Never even thought of it.  I've lived up here all my life; folks wouldn't have it any other way." 

The aurora brightened again and the big man took one last pull from his pipe before knocking its sparking residue out against the rail of his sled.

"Sorry I couldn't be any more help," the man said as he remounted his sled.  "I'd love to stay and chew the fat with you gentlemen but I'm runnin' a pretty tight schedule."

Before the Captain could object the big man was back on his runners and had his dogs, or whatever they were, up and straining against their harnesses.  In what seemed nearly an afterthought, the big man dug his huge mitten underneath the canvas tarp lashed tightly across the sled and retrieved a small package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.  He tossed the package in a lazy arc across his team to the Captain, who caught it clumsily in his own heavy arctic mittens.

"You boys be careful and keep warm, now," the man cautioned with a serious tone.  "It's a fearsome cold out here tonight."

He made a strange sound that Cratchett did not recognize and the team strained as one, forcing the heavy sled into motion.  "Merry Christmas, son," the big man said, smiling in the green light.  "Merry Christmas."

"Wait, how…" the Captain started.  But with surprising speed, the man was already gone.

Captain Cratchett stood silently in the snow and watched the man with his dogs disappear into the spruces.  When the last sounds of the team had withered into the cold forest he turned around, searching the faces of his crewmates.  They were clearly as perplexed as he.

As the Captain moved to walk back toward the aircraft he remembered the package and, sliding one gloved hand out of his mittens, carefully tore the paper away.  Holding the little box up so that the faint glow from the aurora illuminated it fully he could just make out the stenciled inscription, "Transmission Debris Screen, Combining, 1 ea, CH-47D Helicopter, NSN 4769-33-8524, Boeing Vertol Inc. Philadelphia, PA."