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Danger Word by Steven Barnes & Tananarive Due
Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due are frequent collaborators; in fiction, they’ve produced film scripts, this story, and three Te
Barnes is the bestselling author of many novels, such as Lion’s Blood, Zulu Heart, Great Sky Woman, and Shadow Valley. He’s also worked on television shows such as The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Andromeda, and Stargate. Due is a two-time finalist for the Bram Stoker Award, and her novels include the My Soul to Keep series, The Between, The Good House, and Joplin’s Ghost.
Barnes’s short work has appeared in Analog and Asimov’s Science Fiction, while Due’s has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Dark Delicacies II, and Voices from the Other Side. Stories by both have been included in the anthologies Dark Dreams (where this story first appeared), Dark Matter, and Mojo: Conjure Stories.
It’s a universal human urge to leave the world a better place than you found it, and to pass on to your children a world where they can have a happier, more prosperous life than you had. This has mostly been the case throughout human history, as ever-expanding infrastructure and knowledge have generally made life more secure and comfortable generation after generation, through i
Recent works have grappled with this generational guilt in different ways. One of the best-known examples is Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, a post-apocalyptic story in which a father attempts to guide his young son through a devastated landscape, all the while knowing that their situation is hopeless. The notion of enduring anything to protect your children is a primal one, and one of the worst things that most people can imagine is being helpless to aid their children. Our next story deals with this theme in a powerful way.
For a generation facing the prospect of bequeathing to their children a shattered world, one fear stands out even more than being helpless to protect your child: that you yourself might be the architect of your child’s undoing.
When Kendrick opened his eyes, Grandpa Joe was standing over his bed, a tall dark bulk dividing the morning light. Grandpa Joe’s beard covered his dark chin like a coat of snow. Mom used to say that guardian angels watched over you while you slept, and Grandpa Joe looked like he might have been guarding him all night with his shotgun. Kendrick didn’t believe in guardian angels anymore, but he was glad he could believe in Grandpa Joe.
Most mornings, Kendrick opened his eyes to only strangeness: dark, heavy curtains, wooden planks for walls, a brownish-gray stuffed owl mounted near the window, with glassy black eyes that twitched as the sun set-or seemed to. A rough pine bed. And that smell everywhere, like the smell in Mom and Dad’s closet. Cedar, Grandpa Joe told him. Grandpa Joe’s big, hard hands had made the whole cabin of it, one board and beam at a time.
For the last six months, this had been his room, but it still wasn’t, really. His Spider-Man bed sheets weren’t here. His G.I. Joes, Tonka trucks, and Matchbox racetracks weren’t here. His posters of Blade and Shaq weren’t on the walls. This was his bed, but it wasn’t his room.
“Up and at ’em, Little Soldier,” Grandpa Joe said, using the nickname Mom had never liked. Grandpa was dressed in his hickory shirt and blue jeans, the same clothes he wore every day. He leaned on his rifle like a cane, so his left knee must be hurting him like it always did in the mornings. He’d hurt it long ago, in Vietnam.
“I’m going trading down to Mike’s. You can come if you want, or I can leave you with the Dog-Girl. Up to you.” Grandpa’s voice was morning-rough. “Either way, it’s time to get out of bed, sleepyhead.”
Dog-Girl, the woman who lived in a house on a hill by herself fifteen minutes’ walk west, was their closest neighbor. Once upon a time she’d had six pit bulls that paraded up and down her fence. In the last month that number had dropped to three. Grandpa Joe said meat was getting scarce. Hard to keep six dogs fed, even if you needed them. The dogs wagged their tails when Kendrick came up to the fence, because Dog-Girl had introduced him to them, but Grandpa Joe said those dogs could tear a man’s arms off.
“Don’t you ever stick your hand in there,” Grandpa Joe always said. “Just because a dog looks friendly don’t mean he is. Especially when he’s hungry.”
“Can I have a Coke?” Kendrick said, surprised to hear his own voice again, so much smaller than Grandpa Joe’s, almost a little girl’s. Kendrick hadn’t pla
“If Mike’s got one, you’ll get one. For damn sure.” Grandpa Joe’s grin widened until Kendrick could see the hole where his tooth used to be: his straw-hole, Grandpa Joe called it. He mussed Kendrick’s hair with his big palm. “Good boy, Kendrick. You keep it up. I knew your tongue was in there somewhere. You better start using it, or you’ll forget how. Hear me? You start talking again, and I’ll whip you up a lumberjack breakfast, like before.”
It would be good to eat one of Grandpa Joe’s famous lumberjack breakfasts again, piled nearly to the ceiling: a bowl of fluffy eggs, a stack of pancakes, a plate full of bacon and sausage, and homemade biscuits to boot. Grandpa Joe had learned to cook in the Army.
But whenever Kendrick thought about talking, his stomach filled up like a balloon and he thought he would puke. Some things couldn’t be said out loud, and some things shouldn’t. There was more to talking than most people thought. A whole lot more.
Kendrick’s eye went to the bandage on Grandpa Joe’s left arm, just below his elbow, where the tip peeked out at the edge of his shirtsleeve. Grandpa Joe had said he’d hurt himself chopping wood yesterday, and Kendrick’s skin had hardened when he’d seen a spot of blood on the bandage. He hadn’t seen blood in a long time. He couldn’t see any blood now, but Kendrick still felt worried. Mom said Grandpa Joe didn’t heal as fast as other people, because of his diabetes. What if something happened to him? He was old. Something could.
“That six-point we brought down will bring a good haul at Mike’s. We’ll trade jerky for gas. Don’t like to be low on gas,” Grandpa said. His foot slid a little on the braided rug as he turned to leave the room, and Kendrick thought he heard him hiss with pain under his breath. “And we’ll get that Coke for you. Whaddya say, Little Soldier?”
Kendrick couldn’t make any words come out of this mouth this time, but at least he was smiling, and smiling felt good. They had something to smile about, for once.
Three days ago a buck had come to drink from the creek.
Through the kitchen window, Kendrick had seen something move-antlers, it turned out-and Grandpa Joe grabbed his rifle when Kendrick motioned. Before the shot exploded, Kendrick had seen the buck look up, and Kendrick thought, It knows. The buck’s black eyes reminded him of Dad’s eyes when he had listened to the news on the radio in the basement, hunched over his desk with a headset. Kendrick had guessed it was bad news from the trapped look in his father’s eyes.