Apex Magazine Issue 8

By Apex Book Company

Apex Magazine is an online digital zine of genre short fiction.

SHORT FICTION
“p.a. chic” by Tobias Amadon Bengelsdorf
“The Lady or the Tiger” by J.M. McDermott
"The Killing Streets" by Colin Harvey

• Language: English
• Publisher: Apex Book Company
• Release date: Nov 22, 2010
• ISBN: 9781458161321

Book preview

Apex Magazine Issue 8

J.M. McDermott Tobias Amadon Bengelsdorf Colin Harvey

The Lady or the Tiger Copyright © 2009 by J.M. McDermott

p.a. chic Copyright © 2009 by Tobias Amadon Bengelsdorf

The Killing Streets Copyright © 2009 by Colin Harvey (Originally appeared in Interzone #225)

Cover art by Stefan Keller

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Publisher/Editor-in-Chief—Jason Sizemore

Senior Editor—Gill Ainsworth

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Graphic Designer—Justin Stewart

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ISSN: 2157-1406

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Apex Publications

PO Box 24323

Lexington, KY 40524

Contents

The Lady or the Tiger

J.M. McDermott

p.a. chic

Tobias Amadon Bengelsdorf

The Killing Streets

Colin Harvey

Last Dragon Ad

The Lady or the Tiger

J.M. McDermott

J.M. McDermott’s Last Dragon, his first novel, was shortlisted for a Crawford Prize, and was #6 on Amazon.com’s Year’s Best SF/F of 2008. It’s currently available from Apex Publications as an inexpensive eBook. By day, he is a game writer for an unannounced XBox 360 title from Xaviant Software, north of Atlanta.

Visit J.M.’s blog at jmmcdermott.blogspot.com.

Re-imagined from a tale by Frank Stockton, 1882

Many years ago, when I was a boy of only ten, I was in a terrible crash on the cliffs south of Io Town, where nights are a deep tundra freeze and afternoons are as hot as a summer on the long plains. Even now, I close my eyes and I can still see Sheila’s face just before she was crushed under two thick layers of plasteel.

I had watched her half of the flyer cracking away from mine, and rolling on top of her.

And collapsing.

On top of her.

Her scream disappeared from the icy air so fast, the only way I knew it had been real was the echo of it, down the canyons, where a small avalanche threw rocks and snow down to the stream.

I tried to free her, but my brother, Jiri, stopped me because the freeze would preserve her until we could dig her out during the warm day, and we had to make our shelter before we froze to death. We had our survival to worry about. We could save her in the morning.

So that’s what we did.

We were in our shelter. We were warm, and mostly safe enough. Jiri had told me to try to get some sleep.

I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking about her. I tried to remember the songs she sang over me while I swam in the river, or the special way she had of preparing sandwiches for me, with the crusts cut off and the sauce on both sides. Then, all I could think of was the explosion, the fall, the screaming, and the crushing sound of the plasteel, and blood in the snow from when my brother had used flaming wreckage to burn the stumps shut at his lost fingers.

The only thing I could think of to take my mind off of Sheila, and the crash, was asking my brother about Guj Sarwar, the tiger on the back of the great and mighty lizard, Samarkand. When I was a boy, I didn’t understand why it was the only other thing I could think about, like something was on the tip of my tongue.

And, Jiri knew everything there was to know about the wastes of the far west, the lizards, and the tigers. He was fifteen years old. Next year, he’d be driving cattle up the highway to Io Town in a flyer all by himself. I was only ten. I didn’t even have my own computer terminal yet. I had to share his when he wasn’t using it. Everything I knew about the wastes had been from the computer, and from Jiri.

On the wastes, Simsa, said my brother, you can’t walk on the ground. The sand is all quicksand. It sucks you up and swallows you. You have to ride on the back of giant lizards as big as walking mountains. There’re only twenty-five lizards. They have names.

Are there plants on the wastes?

"Of course there’re plants, Simsa. There’re plants everywhere; even out here on the high canyons, clover grows, and