Black Cat Weekly #203 (eBook)

Ron Miller, Sierra Bibi, Tom Easton, Hal Charles, Nicky Nielsen, Marcelle Dubé, Bud Pharo, John S. G (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
897 Seiten
Black Cat Weekly (Verlag)
9780000969620 (ISBN)

Infos

This time, we have another full issue, with classic novels by Victor Bridges and Justin Huntly McCarthy, a novelet by British horror maestro John S. Glasby, and shorts by Sierra Bibi, Ron Miller, Hal Meredith, Richard Deming, Nicky Nielsen, Tom Easton, Bud Pharo, and Marcelle Dubé. Plus, of course, a brand new solve-it-yourself puzzler from Hal Charles. Lots of fun!

Here's the complete lineup-

Cover Art: Steve Hickman

NOVELS

The Red Lodge, by Victor Bridges [classic mystery]

A young doctor's attempt to help his mentor leads to mystery, romance-and murder!

The Dryad, by Justin Huntly McCarthy [classic fantasy]

A knight's enchantment, a forest maiden's love, and ancient gods' last stand...

NOVELET

'Things of the Dark,' by John S. Glasby

   When an ancient evil awakens in the snow, a mountain rescue turns into a nightmare...

SOLVE-IT-YOURSELF MYSTERY

'By the Numbers,' by Hal Charles

   Can you solve the mystery before the detective? All the clues are there!

SHORT STORIES

'The Sovereign Individual,' by Sierra Bibi

   A billionaire's bodyguard faces impossible choices during society's collapse.

'Velda on the Ropes,' by Ron Miller [P.I. Velda series]

   A rigged fight, a sudden death-and Velda's on the case again.

'The Man in the Blue Blouse,' by Hal Meredith [Sexton Blake series]

   Blake unravels a cunning murder plot involving a baboon and a bloody sword-cane.

'Mugger Murder,' by Richard Deming

   A routine self-defense case raises disturbing questions for a detective.

'Helping Hands,' by Nicky Nielsen

   The Venus de Milo grows arms nightly. No one must ever know!

'Diamonds in the Air,' by Tom Easton

   An out-of-work accountant uncovers a secret that defies his reality.

'The Epeius Trap,' by Marcelle Dubé

   What killed everyone aboard the salvage station?

'An Icy Reception' by Bud Pharo

   A synthetic engineer faces deadly prejudice at a remote lunar mining facility.

Textauszug

THE SOVEREIGN INDIVIDUAL,
by Sierra Bibi

When the world’s richest man asks me to drive his car through a crowd of protestors, I think at first I must have heard him wrong.

“I can’t get through, there are too many people in the way.”

The rioters surround the Range Rover. They rock it from side to side, timidly at first, then with increased vigor. Back and forth, back and forth. I fear at any moment the world will flip upside down and we’ll be trapped.

“Drive through the people,” David Brand says from the passenger seat. There is no panic in his voice. He says this in the same way he’d ask me to reschedule a meeting or to make him a matcha latte.

“You need to do this now,” he continues when I don’t respond. “Here’s a thought exercise: what do you think will happen if they get us out of this car?”

In her car seat, Faustina is wailing with total abandon, the way only a small child can.

I can’t think. The air filters aren’t keeping up with the wildfire smoke outside. A massive headache is brewing behind my right eye. I put a hand on my thigh, feeling the holster like a talisman.

“Soren,” my boss says. “How is a little toy like that going to intimidate the hordes? It’s us or them. When I hired you, what’s the one thing I said I don’t tolerate?”

“Weakness,” I say automatically. He asks this all the time. Outside, the insurrectionists, faces obscured by bandanas and gas masks, are holding signs that read things like EAT THE RICH and EVICT BRAND FROM EARTH. We’re long past civil disobedience. I shudder to think about what will happen to Faustina in the resulting chaos once they pull us out of the car.

I wrench my eyes shut and stomp on the gas.

First, screams. Then the thump of bodies bouncing off the hood. The suspension jerks as something or someone rolls beneath the tires. Other things are hitting the car. I hear the pings of rocks, bottles, trash, whatever is in reach. And then, somehow, we’re on the other side of them. I open my eyes. The protestors are in the rear view, the downtown Seattle skyline is before us, streaked with dirt, ash and blood.

Faustina isn’t crying anymore. I should have told her to close her eyes. Why didn’t I think of that? Bile rises up in my throat.

As if he’s read my mind, Brand says, “There’s no time to be sick.”

I glance at him in my peripheral. His face is pleasantly neutral. It’s the exact expression a statue of David Brand would wear. Dignified, centered, and unyielding in his locus of control.

He’s right. There’s no amount of money that can keep the pilot waiting indefinitely. Not anymore. And we’re already an hour behind. I return my attention to the road and blast through the red light. I’ve never seen Pike street so deserted. I flick on the windshield washer. It only smears the dirt and blood all over.

* * * *

The gates blocking the road to the airport are padlocked shut. The tarmac lights are extinguished. I park behind the arrivals sign and we continue on foot.

“Daddy, where are we going?”

“Somewhere safe, where no one can hurt us,” Brand says, his voice distorting through the gas mask. The go bag only had one, so naturally it went to Brand. Too big for Faustina anyways, he reasoned.

“Do they have chicken nuggets there?” Faustina asks.

“There’s enough chicken nuggets there to last a millennium.”

I’ve never set foot in a luxury doomsday bunker, but after Brand Industries entered the market last year I know the specs by heart: thirty thousand square foot self-contained underground ecosystem, simulated natural light, geothermal energy, and the same water filtration system that’s on the International Space Station. I’m anxious to see the place in person. Eager, even. Only a handful of units were even completed. No one expected to need them so soon.

The rest of our trek is silent except for coughing. The air is hot, choked with smoke, and as we approach the airfield, perfused with a sharp chemical tinge that sticks to the back of my throat. Faustina is crying again, shrieking in between coughing fits.

“I don’t want to walk anymore,” she says. “I’m tired.”

“You need to be quiet,” Brand snaps.

I scoop her up. She’s heavy, too old to be carried like this, but I sense Brand’s mounting irritation. He regretted his decision to bring her since we left the parking garage.

“It’s only a few days. Just until her mom gets back,” he said when, midway through evacuating the condo, I realized we hadn’t packed a bag for Faustina. “No one can get up to the penthouse. She has her iPad, her Switch, and we’ll leave plenty of food and water.”

“Is her mom coming back here?” I asked in a careful tone. I was skeptical. Flights had been grounded for days. I didn’t see how anyone would make a transatlantic crossing, even if that someone was the ex-wife of the world’s richest man.

“I don’t wanna stay,” Faustina whined from around the corner.

He relented. I packed her purple unicorn backpack with a change of clothes, a stuffed dog, and a bag of goldfish crackers. I don’t have kids. I was an only child. I didn’t know what else to bring.

When we reach the private jet emblazoned with the sleek Brand Enterprises logo, we’re two hours late. The pilot is long gone.

“You can’t depend on anyone these days,” Brand removes his mask, kicking the tire of the jet. “No one wants to work anymore. Call him and put him on speaker.”

“Cell networks are down,” I remind him.

“Soren.” His tone changes. He has a glint in his eye that I don’t like. I pretend I didn’t hear him but I know what’s coming.

“Soren,” he says again. “You need to fly the plane.”

“I can’t fly a plane.”

“You must.”

“I’ll kill us all. No.”

His eyes grow dark. I know he’s counting. That’s twice in one day now. Brand’s not used to being contradicted. I can almost see the shimmer of white hot rage bubbling beneath the mask.

But I’m right and he knows it. We walk back to the Range Rover in silence. The new plan is to drive to the bunker. The major interstates are closed but if we take the backroads, we can be there by morning.

* * * *

The drive is quiet. Faustina is sleeping. Brand stares out the passenger window, at what I don’t know. It’s pitch black outside the beams of the headlights.

We’re in Idaho before he speaks again.

“Turn on the radio,” he says. He’s always been like this. He never asks anyone to do anything. He tells you. Ten years ago, midway through my MBA program, he came into my class as a guest lecturer. He was just a centimillionaire back then. We bonded over a shared love of Ted Kaczynski.

“He’s criminally misunderstood. I believe he’ll be remembered as one of the great poet philosophers of the twentieth century.”

I liked Brand immediately. He was direct and to the point. He didn’t waste his breath with niceties or filler words. We exchanged emails for a few months before I received the 4 a.m. message that changed my life forever:

“You’re wasted on MIT. Come work for me.”

When the world’s most powerful man asks you to drop out of college, you do it. Brand was already known as the Mars guy. He was on the cover of Time magazine that year, standing cross armed in front of one of his rockets. But he wasn’t stopping at Mars. He had a ten point plan to cure cancer. He owned the majority share of a startup that was working on a cold fusion reactor. From a podium at the annual Brand Enterprises keynote address, he swore to raise the standard of living for everyone on earth by an order of magnitude. He was the man summoning the future into the present.

And now here we are. When I dropped out, I thought I’d be building rockets, not playing chauffeur and picking up dry cleaning. And now I get to spend the rest of forever with the man himself in his bunker. Making matcha lattes in perpetuity. Lucky me.

I flip on the radio. I wonder if he doesn’t know how to operate a car stereo or if he just doesn’t want to. There’s a lot of static, then I land on some classical music. It sounds tinny, far away. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Winter, I think.

A thought strikes me. What if Brand decides he doesn’t want to share his stockpile with another person once we arrive at the bunker? He’s carrying a gun of his own. He could take me out the second I stop being useful.

“So don’t stop being useful,” I imagine Brand saying. I shake the thought from my mind. I can’t start doubting him now. Not after all of this.

The soft strings on the radio weigh down my eyelids and the visual rhythm of the dividing line lulls me into a trance. I’ve grown so used to the cacophony of sirens, gunshots, and screams in Seattle these last few weeks. The silence of the desert is comfortable, like slipping into a warm bath. It’s easy to forget it’s the end of the world. But every time I start to dose off, I’m jolted awake by the sensation of phantom bodies rolling underneath the wheels.

I drive all night. I don’t remember closing my eyes but when they open next the sky is dishwater gray and silvery flakes are flying against the windshield. More ash from the mega fire. But no, when it hits the glass it condenses into a bead of water rather than a smear of carbon.

“It’s snowing,” I say, awestruck.

Brand blinks one eye open. “It’s August.”

At some point over the last hour, the classical station has devolved entirely into static. I...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 20.7.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780000969620 / 9780000969620