By Blood We Live

"Can' tell you how much I 'preciate this," Martin said.

He gri

As he turned and walked away, Lucy whispered, "What are-"

"It's self the fence," Martin slurred.

The bats veered suddenly from their random feeding and began to swoop and shriek at the quarry men. Martin stepped over, blocked Lucy's view. The bats flew with less purpose. The men finished their work and ran back towards their trucks a hundred and fifty feet away. One of them grabbed the beer.

Lucy scraped at the screen, making it sing, her face a mixture of anguish and hope. "He said we couldn't kill him. He said he could turn into-"

One man shouted something as she spoke, then a second, then the explosion, a sharp blast that was mostly dark, not at all like the movies, followed by the pebbled drum of debris pattering on the lake.

Someone whistled, a note of appreciation.

"That ought about do it," someone said, and the others laughed. They climbed back into their trucks and drove off into the night with their headlights off.

Martin and Lucy leaned against each other, not touching, the screen between them.

Nursing a hangover, having hardly slept at all, Martin walked up and down the shore at the first hint of dawn, searching for bones or other pieces of Pitr. He thought the gulls might come for them, the way they sometimes came for dead fish. But the gulls stayed way offshore and he found nothing.

Bill came over at sunrise. The island's sheriff and his only deputy arrived shortly after. Martin, prepared to confess everything, instead heard himself repeating the story about some guest injuring himself, with Bill corroborating. Telling them how they bricked in the pumphouse to be safe. Speculating that maybe there was some kind of gas build-up or something.

The sheriff and his deputy seemed pretty skeptical about that last part. They climbed all over the rocks, examining the pieces. The deputy waded down into the water's edge. The flat rock from the garden stood out among all the water-smoothed boulders. The deputy grabbed it, flipped it over. The rat's blood made a dark stain on the bottom.

Martin's heart stuck in his throat.

"Say, is Lucy feeling any better yet?" Bill asked.

"Her fever broke last night, after almost a week," Martin answered, his voice squeaking.

The deputy let go of the rock. It splashed into the water. "What's that? Mrs. Van Wyk's been sick?"

Martin explained how sick she'd been, what a strain it had been on him, with no guests, not able to get out of the house. The sheriff and the deputy both liked Mrs. Van Wyk, appreciated the volunteer work she did for the island's Chamber of Commerce.

The sheriff's radio squawked. Some tourist had woken up on his yacht this morning missing his wallet and wanted to report it stolen. The two men left their regards for Lucy and headed back into town.

The deputy's eyes stared at Martin from the rearview mirror as the car pulled away.

Lucy stood by the window, wearing a long dress, a sweater on top of that, with a blanket around her shoulders. A slight breeze ruffled the lace curtains, slowly twisting them. Martin pressed his hand to her forehead. Her temperature felt normal; the glow had dissipated.

"I destroyed the camera," he told her. "And all the other tapes. I patched up the hole beneath the stairs."

"I'll never be warm again, Martin."

"I'll keep you warm." He wrapped his arms around her.

She turned her back against his touch. "I'll never be beautiful again," she whispered.

"You're lovely." He fastened his lips on the rim of her ear. "You're perfect."

She jerked her head away from his mouth. Outside, a remnant of oily mist layered the surface of the lake, tiny wisps that coalesced, refusing to burn away in the morning sun.

The Wide, Carnivorous Sky by John Langan

John Langan is the author of the novel House of Windows and several stories, including "Episode Seven: Last Stand Against the Pack in the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers," which appeared in my anthology Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, and "How the Day Runs Down," which appeared in The Living Dead. Both of those stories also appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, as has most of his other fiction. A collection of most of Langan's work to date, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters, appeared in late 2008 and was named a finalist for this year's Stoker Award.

This story, which is original to this anthology, is the tale of a quartet of Iraq war veterans who were the only survivors of an encounter with a monstrous, blood-drinking creature during the 2004 Battle of Fallujah. "The story began with its title," Langan said. "A couple of months later, I was watching an interview with an Iraq war veteran who was discussing having been in a Hummer that had been struck by an IED. He described being pi

I

9:13pm

From the other side of the campfire, Lee said, "So it's a vampire."

"I did not say vampire," Davis said. "Did you hear me say vampire?"

It was exactly the kind of thing Lee would say, the gross generalization that obscured more than it clarified. Not for the first time since they'd set out up the mountain, Davis wondered at their decision to include Lee in their plans.

Lee held up his right hand, index finger extended. "It has the fangs."

"A mouthful of them."

Lee raised his middle finger. "It turns into a bat."

"No-its wings are like a bat's."

"Does it walk around with them?"

"They-it extrudes them from its arms and sides."

"'Extrudes'?" Lee said.

Han chimed in: "College."

Not this shit again, Davis thought. He rolled his eyes to the sky, dark blue studded by early stars. Although the sun's last light had drained from the air, his stomach clenched. He dropped his gaze to the fire.

The lieutenant spoke. "He means the thing extends them out of its body."

"Oh," Lee said. "Sounds like it turns into a bat to me."

"Uh-huh," Han said.

"Whatever," Davis said. "It doesn't-"

Lee extended his ring finger and spoke over him. "It sleeps in a coffin."

"Not a coffin-"

"I know, a flying coffin."

"It isn't-it's in low-Earth orbit, like a satellite."

"What was it you said it looked like?" the lieutenant asked. "A cocoon?"

"A chrysalis," Davis said.

"Same thing," the lieutenant said.

"More or less," Davis said, unwilling to insist on the distinction because, even a year and three-quarters removed from Iraq, the lieutenant was still the lieutenant and you did not argue the small shit with him.

"Coffin, cocoon, chrysalis," Lee said, "it has to be in it before sunset or it's in trouble."

"Wait," Han said. "Sunset."

"Yes," Davis began.

"The principle's the same," the lieutenant said. "There's a place it has to be and a time it has to be there by."

"Thank you, sir," Lee said. He raised his pinky. "And, it drinks blood."

"Yeah," Davis said, "it does."

"Lots," Han said.

"Yeah," the lieutenant said.

For a moment, the only sounds were the fire popping and, somewhere out in the woods, an owl prolonging its question. Davis thought of Fallujah.

"Okay," Lee said, "how do we kill it?"