SEAHORN EPUBLISHING ANTHOLOGY OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION ISSUE TWO VOLUME ONE PHIL SEAHORN
SEAHORN EPUBLISHING ANTHOLOGY OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION ISSUE TWO VOLUME ONE By Phil Seahorn
Copyright 2013 properties of Phil Seahorn All rights reserved by owner of the content in which this ebook is based. Under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication will be produced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the owners of the content in which this ebook is based. Seahorn Epublishing www.facebook.com/seahorn epublishing First Edition: July 2013 Seahorn Epublishing is a Facebook based epublishing service which produces for the Internet written, audio, and video content, to be sold to Internet outlets as content. 1.Ebook 2.Science Fiction 3.Fantasy 4. Anthology ISBN LCCN 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 BRD-C
CONTENTS 4 . Hoof Prints in the Snow 9. Thaw 14. Runners
4. Hoof Prints in the Snow Andy woke up around three on this particular Saturday morning, which was like all the Saturday mornings since he moved to St. Louis to finish up his undergrad the past three years. He had just graduated the past December, and was in the process of preparing himself to get out into the workforce with a Bachelor’s degree in Science. That thought of what the future would hold for him, a man of color with a degree in the job market of 2014, was enough to keep anybody from getting sleep. Such was the case with this cold February morning, snow again hitting St. Louis. Andy was making damn sure that wherever he would go from St. Louis, it would be some place fucking warm. But Andy did not let the view from his kitchen window stop him from preparing to do his laundry. He always liked that time of the morning to do his laundry, almost making it a Zen thing. In the last three years that he lived at this particular apartment building, he never had to contend with four inches of snow while he did his laundry in the winters past. Andy gathered up his laundry bag of the week’s clothes (he worked at a call center at a major university, so he didn’t really have a lot of cloths). Plus being a student for three years, he didn’t need to have many. The bag of clothes was slung over his back like an urban Santa, as he climbed down the back steps of his apartment building. He would take the back way of the building, avoiding walking thru the parking garage in the basement to get to the laundry room on the other side of the parking garage. Andy still took the precaution of packing. He didn’t care that he lived in Richmond Heights, one of the more affluent counties in St. Louis. Even doing his laundry, Andy would pop a cap if necessary. No place was safe nowadays.
5. The thing that really spooked Andy was the stories that were told to him about the building he had moved in. He had started messing with a blonde with a big ass around the corner, as she had a mixed daughter and was looking for a positive man of color to come into their life. It didn’t hurt that Andy was attending and working at the most prestigious university in the region, either. She had told Andy about the building, how the building was haunted. Turns out there had been a cult that had preferred moving it’s members into the apartment building Andy was living in. People in the neighborhood would notice tenants that would come out of the apartment, in the dead of winter, 15 or 20 degrees, with nothing on but the clothes they were wearing: no coat, no hat or gloves. And that they all carried what looked like Daniel Boone bags, both the men and women. But it was the behaviour of the tenants in the winter and their clothing (or lack thereof) that puzzled the neighbours. About ten years back, a double murder and homicide had occurred in the building, all involving tenants who dressed like that. But it was what happened after the murders in the building that got the neighbors to really start talking. They would notice figures during the day and night walking around the complex, all of them in the same clothes and Daniel Boone bag, but looking more out of place. The only problem was, some of the folks would just disappear before entering the apartment. Then, the apartment managers would move people into the apartment of the triple deaths. The neighbours in the apartment complex would complain of very strong, almost cinnamon smell coming from the apartment of the deaths, as if the people inside were using incense to cover up smoking ganja. Only problem with that, Andy’s blonde neighbour explained, was that
6. the tenants never had incense, and never used it. They, too, would complain of the smell in the apartment which would just suddenly appear for periods of time, then completely disappear. The kicker to the stories that Andy’s on and off again blonde girlfriend told Andy was what would occur in the basement of the building. She told Andy that people would see a guy with a baseball cap hung over his eyes, wearing a baseball jersey that would seem dated. He would pass by you in the basement. If you turned around, suddenly he would be gone. Andy really did not appreciate the last part of the neighbor’s story, as she knew that whenever they would get thru fooling around in the middle of the night when she couldn’t get to sleep either, he would do his laundry. Sometimes they would do theirs together .But he couldn’t wait for her to do his laundry with all the time. It was that snowy Saturday morning, around four in the morning after Andy had showered and meditated, he would do his laundry routine. He got down to the basement, put his clothes in the laundry machines, took his pistol out, and scanned the basement.The snow outside had started to come down pretty fast. Andy knew he had to get the laundry done by 6 in the morning, or he would be facing a half foot or more of snow to drag his clean cloths thru. Andy made sure the basement was clear, but still backed up the stairs, still facing the basement. It didn’t help that he had smoked some of the best ganja that he had come across in St. Louis in a while. Andy opened the back door and looked at the snow. It was coming down hard, and he could see the cars slowing down to a creep as they turned onto highway 40, in which the apartment was right next to. Then Andy looked down.
7. At first, Andy thought it was the ganja. But then, he looked more closely. There were hoof prints in the snow. Now, Andy was a city boy, but he could pretty much figure out what constituted as dog prints. These prints were a size 8 or 9.They stretched from the doorway to the laundry, all the way to the door in which Andy exited his apartment. Andy stepped out, and looked up and down the small ally way that existed between the apartment complex and the sound walls of the highway. The snow gleamed off the metal of his pistol, as he slipped the clip out of the pistol, to make damn sure he was loaded. He snapped the clip back into the pistol with an audible click. Andy didn’t know what the fuck made those hoof prints, but the prints were a fucking lot bigger than a dog. Andy looked at the print in the snow. Yep, Andy thought, this was a hoof print, and this was not made by any dog he could think of. Andy stood in the snow and night air, shivering. Fuck this, he thought, and held the pistol in front of him as he made his way to the other door. Andy slowly opened the door to the back entrance, putting his foot into the door that led to the basement. That would prevent anything, he meant anyone, from coming up and thru that basement door. On doing this, Andy quickly got his keys out, and entered his apartment. Then, he screamed. The apartment manager dreaded coming to the apartment in Richmond Heights, on news of what happened there. The Saturday night air was filled with sirens and cops were still there at the building in Richmond Heights. Apparently, one of the tenants, the one that was moved into apartment One West, seemed to have come under some kind of foul play. The neighboUrs said that they heard a scream and a gunshot that early morning, and by the evening, a strong odor was
8. coming from the apartment. They described the odor as strong cinnamon. It got stronger and stronger as the evening went on. But it was the gunshot that made the neighbours call the cops. When the manager arrived, he gave the cops permission to enter with him, as he had the master keys after he and the cops knocked on the apartment door for five minutes. What they saw inside the apartment made the manager and the two cops throw up, almost comically simultaneously .The manager and the cops staggered out the back door of the apartment building into the snow. It started snowing again. And then, a strong cinnamon smell appeared out of nowhere. But what caused the manager to almost shit his pants was what he and the cops saw in the snow. Giant hoof prints. THE END
9. Thaw The orbital routes had been open for almost two years without incident between the moon, Earth, and the asteroid belts off of the orbit of Neptune. The Asteroid Wars had been over for eight years with less and less terrorist activity until a year before Alonzo Bellingrande decided to opt for space freighter duty. The economy had bounced back enough in Sky City One, but there were just too many people migrating from the surface of earth to the floating suborbital cities, the Asteroid belts, even to the Moon and Mars colonies. The Asteroid Wars had taken place primarily on earth, which everyone agreed after hindsight was extremely stupid. The war was over asteroids in space, after all. Alonzo had enough job offers, but none that would pay him enough to leave Sky city eventually. He had lived on Earth until the Asteroid Wars, when half of the world’s population migrated to the three sky cities that were already built. Before the migration from the surface to suborbital Earth ended, 13 more sky cites were constructed and placed into operation in suborbital space all over the globe. Because of this migration, one third of the world’s population disappeared from the surface. The unintentional side effects of the crazy corporations military’s killing enough of each other to make the remaining world military weak enough for sancture.The Wars ended, and the repairs of earth had begun. Alonzo would have taken a job in New St, Louis, Missouri, rebuilding the gateway Arch after the Asteroid Wars attack on it. He decided that the Asteroid Run would make him far more money, and allow him the chance to explore the new mining towns that were popping up all over the asteroid belt.
10. Alonzo had just reported in to duty on the freighter ship Solomon Northup, which was assigned three stops and pickups in the asteroid belt before it docked at Obama City. From there, Alonzo planned on heading to the mars colonies to exchange his credits for America dollars, as that was the only accepted currency in the Asteroids. Something about being as distantly removed from United Earth federated money and the U.E. itself. It was still a pain in the ass to go to mars. Mars was a shithole. He had just gotten comfortable in his space walk gear, when everything light up outside his suit’s helmet visor like the sun. After blinking numerous times, Alonzo opened his eyes. The interior readings on his helmet visor had gone to red. Alonzo instantly knew why. The ship had vanished around him. The Solomon Northup was in pieces, as Alonzo floated thru the wreckage. He could see the remainder of the crew floating amid the wreckage. He also noted that his energy shield had been activated just as he completed checks on the flight gear that was attached to his space suit. Alonzo knew that was the only thing that saved his life. He got no other life readings from scans of the floating fellow crew members. He didn’t even bother to jet over to a floating body, because he knew that they were just that: dead bodies floating in space. Alonzo immediately keyed in a location beacon for a life ship. Before the war, thousands of life ships were launched into the space between earth and mars, guarantying the safety of anybody who found themselves adrift in space. No matter the drift time in an untethered space suit, a life ship would key in to your location, and eventually a drifting astronaut would be picked up.
11. It took two minutes until three life ships keyed into his position. The only problem was, the nearest one was 24 hours away. Alonzo cursed himself for not insisting that the route in which the Soloman Northrup was taking to get to one of the asteroid stops was way to off the established star shipping routes, taking the ship almost 27,000 miles outside the shipping radius, and putting the ship in exactly the type of situation it had found itself in as well as her crew. Alonzo keyed in the sub hyper sleep routine. Better to wake up a day later on a life ship than go crazy floating in space for 24 hours. He would spend all those 24 hours trying to figure out what the fuck happened that destroyed the Solomon Northup. Alonzo opened his eyes. He was staring at a ceiling of some sort, in a color that he had never seen before. That was his first gut instinct reaction that something was very, very wrong here. He winced, trying to raise his head from the padded table he was lying on. His suit and gear had been removed, but the specs of the ceiling and the surrounding room was nothing like any interior of any spaceship he had ever seen ore been on. The large room he was in was lit very brightly as he raised room the table. His body and shoulders ached tremendously. His arms and hands were shaking .He settled himself as he trained to do in dealing with the affects of long term hyper sleep. The pre medicated endorphins already in his blood stream should even him out, as well as the other meds that were instantly injected into him once he put on the spacesuit for a spacewalk. The meds were used in case of a forced hyper sleep using a suit hyper sleep device, which was much different form a standard issue hyper sleep unit for a spaceship. Alonzo looked around the room, more cube shaped than a room that humans would build. Alonzo knew that not only had he been in hyper sleep far, far longer than a day, but that this
12. room was not part of a ship built by humans. He looked up at the ceiling of the room which had nothing else in it but the table in which he woke up on. He looked at the far right wall of the cubed room. It was window of some sorts. He was able to physically walk over to the window and look out. Yep, Alonzo said out loud, he wasn’t in Kansas anymore. “I assume that the hologram is something that does not represent your true form?” Alonzo asked the hologram of the human woman in uniform. The image grew to be the height of the entire room, with the human figure looking down at Alonzo. This made Alonzo extremely uncomfortable. “Yes, we have assumed that this appearance would make you feel more comfortable. While frozen in your suit, it sustained you thru solar repowering for almost three hundred of your years, is a remarkable feat for a people such as yours.” said the hologram. Alonzo really didn’t like that tone. He knew he was fucked: an advanced, space faring civilization has captured him or rescued him, he didn’t know yet. And they already feel that his “people” are substandard. He saw a” white man meets Indians for the first time” scenario, with him being the Indians. The figure started to change its appearance.”We are the ….” Alonzo saw nothing but blinding light after that. He awoke back in his suit, still floating in space waiting to be picked up by a life ship. He checked the chronometer in the faceplate screen. It read”23 hours plus”. He looked to his left. Alonzo saw a bright light far off in the distance of dark space. The readings on the face helmet
13. indicated that something was approaching his position. Alonzo felt very groggy. Short term hyper sleep was never a good idea, as hyper sleep was meant for extremely long term use. Short term use, especially if the body is under extreme stress, was simply not good. And Alonzo felt that. He saw from his readings that, well, something was coming closer. The instruments would not give a direct reading. “It should read a fucking life ship” he said out loud. The light in the far distance of space was slowly coming closer. Alonzo still was not getting any accurate reading as to exactly what was coming toward him. Then he remembered the strange ass dream he had while in mini hyper sleep. He looked again at the chronometer. His eyes grew wide. Tapping the interior light of the helmet up to” full”, he read the chronometer correctly. The grogginess of stress involved hyper sleep, or the static of the readings coming thru on the face plate screen, had caused him to misread the time stamp on the chronometer. After the number “23” was a number “7” and then the word “years”. Alonzo knew then: his dream was either a premonition, or a warning. The light came closer as the readings on his visor became more and more erratic. Alonzo was about to find out which.
THE END
14. RUNNERS
NEW ST. LOUIS, MO 2039 The eleven contestants were lined up in the cold afternoon of February 2039 in New St. Louis. They all stood in front of the Old Courthouse, which stood in front of theGateway Arch. The winter sun shone off the sides of the Arch like neon light, even in the noonday sun. The announcers were all gathered intheir remote Thermal Units. Spectators who dared to come to the event had personal T.U.’s, but these crowds of spectators were the One Percent, as a personal T.U. that could withstand events like the Cold Run ran close to three thousand dollars apiece. Most of the downtownNew St. Louis area had been evacuated beforehand. The businesses that had to stay open had all their employees move to underground Thermal Units to continueworking.Others, like police and utility workers, had to trust their personal Thermal Units, and all were paid hazard pay for attending this year’s Cold Run. In the last ten years, the Midwest had become the epicenter for crazy ass weather. Mostpeoplewho had any money moved out of the Midwest after the winter of 16, when 4 million plus froze to death in the very first Artic Death Vortex. After the winter of 2016, 12 million people made an exodus from the Midwest, totally rearranging the civilian structure of the entire United States. The millions of Americans who moved in 2016 saved their own lives. Thewinterof 2017 wiped out the remainder of the Midwest
15. population with an Artic Vortex that blasted across 34 states with temperatures and wind chills reaching 70 below zero. The Midwest now housed people who were still living in these Arcticconditions. The entire Midwest infrastructure had to be retrofitted to surviveto function in sub zerotemperatures.With the “myth “of global warming taking people out by the millions all over the world, there were still the stalwart Americans who would not abandon 2/3rds of theUnited States because of weather. And in commemorations of that die hard, American ruggedness and “Manifest Destiny”, The Cold Runs were created. This year, the first occurrence an Artic Death Vortex had been tracked to start in Colorado, and head east (as they always did) with the worst conditions manifesting themselves in the New St. Louis Metro areas. The eleven runners from all over the world had arrived a week earlier, just in case the artic death vortex decided to start early. Each winner of the Cold Run would receive one million dollars, plus gaining the status of a One Percenter for the rest of their lives, if they chose to still live inland of the United States or U.S. owned colonies. That is if they survived the Runs. CHAPTER TWO Hagomon Rasputin Washington had second thoughts about this shit the first time he even was propositioned for this suicidal shit. But 5 million G’s and the opportunity to fuck a Hollywood A-Lister for the rest of his life was just too damned appealing.
16. He had been born and had grown up in a Metro Alton tent city. Since he had been the age of seven, he had grown very, very tired of being poor. Even with the part time job at the ganja factory, he still was stuck with the rest of the American population; never having enough money to do anything but work, eat, sleep, fuck, then die. Unless you had the I.Q. of Albert Einstein, you weren’t even considered “normal” anymore. If it had not been for Hagomon’s running skills and athleticism, that would be his life for as long as he remained in the United States. But it was the winters in the Community Thermal Units that were the worse. Eitheryou went into one of them, sometimes for weeks, or you died. So many people would go into the Units, but so many would not come back out alive. All the frustrationsof being a 99 percenter would well up and erupt. TheGovernment looked the other way, even encouraged the Alton, Illinois residents too poor to move out of Vortex territory to killthemselves off. ”Crowd control” they called it. So when Facebook sent scouts out the summer of 2018 to place people in the upcoming Cold Run, they had recruited him. Hagomon would make enough money to get his family out of Vortex country, even to Hawaii or Australia, wherepeople never had to deal with the vortex shit. While his family and friends suffered inside one of the Units when the Death Vortex hit the Metro Eastarea, he would be running from downtown St. Louis to University City, Mo. If he survived.
17. CHAPTER THREE Hagomon was in his thermal running suit. The suits were designed for maximum thermal submergence. The suit that Hagomon was wearing was a beta version of a thermal suit that Facebook was ready to market. The Research and Development suggested the best way to test one of the beta versions of the Facebook Thermal Units (F.B.U.’s) were to enter one in a Cold Run. Hagomon adjusted the helmet, as the Facebook techs made the final adjustments to the suit. The suits were designed with the same technology of the now defunct NASA. They were designed for maximum portability, one of the key factors to surviving a death vortex. Since the Black Winter of 2016, Thermal Unit Suits became a must have. Facebook was bankrolling the research and manufacturing of the suits. Only the very rich could afford the first suits, as the One Percenters would not give up Boulder or Aspen or any of the pleasure resorts in the Midwest .In the past, twenty two thousand One Percenters died in the winter of 2017, the second Arctic Death Vortex. When the Government was able to reenter parts of Colorado, many of the rescue workers were traumatized for life. All the victims caught outside in the Arctic Death vortex were instantly crystallized, clothing and all. It was as if an atom bomb had been set off. That‘s how cold the second death vortex got. Hagomon was trying to get his uplink to work to get the latest weather forecasts for the New St. Louis area. He kept texting outside techs that he was having problems with the Internet feed. They texted him back, as the data flowed in front of his view screen inside his T.U. helmet, that conditions for this particular arctic death vortex were the most unique that the weather analysts
18. of the day had ever seen.”What the fuck does that even mean?” Hagoman said to himself. ”This shit could still kill you.” Hagomon saw an image of a tech hologram suddenly take up his entire field of vision in the helmet view plate.”Your mike is still on,” said the voice of his handler. Hagomon had to keep it clean. After all, he was being broadcast live on Youtube, Disney Local News, and even the Fallon Channel. He was going to enjoy being Fallon’s 1,000 guests after he completed the run. Fallon was approaching sixty; he didn’t have much time left. The survivors came away with a hefty sum and some One Percent action for a year. Of course, after that , the winners of the Cold Races faded into the collective pop culture memory of the overly electronically saturated and the dreadfully unworked American population. So, if you ran the Cold run and survived, you became a celebrity for a year, allowing you to completely cash in on your popularity in any way that you could. So, the Cold Run became like a poor man’s “American Idol. Each year thousands of people would send in t videos or holograms to be reviewed.If it wasn’t for the fact that his running coach from East Alton High School was the brother in law of a Facebook suit. The readings from the pirated weather forecasr were being streamed to all the runners. They knew that as they had to make a decision. There was no turning back in the direction in which they had begun the run from the New St. Louis riverfront. The Vortex had been reported just ten miles out from the riverfront, passing Belleville and heading toward the New St. Louis metropolitan area. It would hit University City within the hour. Hagomon made a decision. He keyed in to his hidden cloud drive that he had smuggled under the noses of this tech inspectors before the run. Everyone on the run had low jacked shit coming
19. into the race. It would take a full wake of diagnostics to clear all the runners. Time was of the essence in this game. The cloud drive gave him a beep to an electric SUV .According to the data coming in; the couple who owned the van had decided to hit one of the municipal vortex bunkers instead of chancing the twenty minute drive from downtown St. Louis to University City. The couple knew that all the bunkers from here to the east coast were either being filled up or where already filled. There were still 3 million fools who would not let a little thing like global warming and the threat of being instantly crystallized by 200 degree below zero cold fronts. The other runners joined him in the SUV.One of the runners did a scan, and made sure that all the runners who chose not to make the run toward U City and still try to win the race were still round. Once the runners were inside, Hagamon uploaded the emergency shielding program that came equipped with all vehicles used in the mid west Untied States. The SUV was immediately plated in onyx black crystal shielding, designed to withstand temperatures of space. Even with the shielding, the electric car would only go so far, having to divert it energy to the shielding, just to keep the passengers alive while driving in an Arctic Death Vortex. One of the runners had the same idea, and was jury rigging components in the control board of the electric vehicle. The vehicle had already accelerated to 110 miles an hour, making absolutely no noise as it made its way thru the cluttered but completely deserted streets toward University City. The one runner sitting at the auto manual controls in the front of the EV looked at the others in the EV, who had positioned themselves around various components of the holographic control
20. board. “What the fuck are all of you doing?” Hagomon asked still studying the advancing perimeter of the vortex as the electric vehicle sped up Lindell Boulevard, half mile from Skinker but twenty minutes ahead of the Vortex, which had already reached Kingshighway in the city of new St. Louis. Reports were already coming in from drones showing piles of crystallized remains of the homeless or mentally ill who simply did not take any of the weather events seriously. Hagomon was always amazed at the growing number of people every year who simply don’t leave when a Vortex is announced. Hagomon noticed that the energy reserves in the vehicle were surpassing two hundred percent. The runners had jury rigged an energy spike with their individual suits. It was just enough to spike the vehicles’ energy levels, creating self-replicating recharge every thirty seconds. It was a trick the tech boys had learned a few years back and where still experimenting with electricity that can replicate itself. This would literally be unlimited energy. The Electric SUV made the right on Skinker, almost coming off of the Meg lift platform running the electric wheels of the vehicle. It decelerated to twenty miles an hour as it made the left on Delmar. The runners could see the media outpost up ahead. The runners could also see the three runners who chose to finish the Cold Run. Both runners all looked at each other. Hagomon understood. He knew that all of them would make a tech pact agreement, which would automatically lock them into the process they performed to spike the energy in the SUV. They all knew that everything that occurred from the time the runners entered the SUV had been monitored by Control, but they also knew that the oriented stream on the Internet
21. guaranteed the runners in the SUV copyrights to the limitless energy process that they had jury rigged inside the EV. Everyone in the SUV started celebrating, giving each other the high five. Suddenly, they heard shots ring out. They looked out of the SUV and saw seven Military Police advancing with arms raised toward the van. They then saw the runners, their heads smoldering heaps of steaming flaming mass of burnt flesh; right where the heads should have been. Everyone in the SUV knew. Better to wait it out and be killed by the Vortex in less than 10 minutes. Control had decided that the recorded events where enough and that no physical evidence need to remain. Everyone in in the race was to be killed. Control decided they did not want to share the goodies. And they could always say that someone or everyone would die in some mishap during the Annual Arctic Death vortex Events. Hagomon turned to the other runners, producing a data strip from his suit. He hooked it into the virtual control board. “Everyone stay hooked up,” Hagomon said.” And all the runners turned toward the viewport overlooking the advancing armed men, as the combined energy from all the runner’s suits built up to an explosive charge. THE END