TWO STORIES
by Dan McNeil

WAR CAN DO FUNNY THINGS TO PEOPLE, BUT IS IT THE BE-ALL AND END-ALL?

You pad through the street, remembering it as a canyon, shadowed by tall buildings on either side. Now there�s only bright early morning light and rubble and smashed vehicles, and the mixed scent of burnt fuel and metal and plastic and concrete and meat. You admire a 5 series BMW, still beautiful despite it being a burned out shell. You sidestep a corpse, slam packed with shards of glass from a destroyed building. It might be female, but you can�t be sure.

The guys are away back, resting, cleaning weapons. You�re exploring the remains of a city you used to know. You shouldn�t really go far, the city isn�t secure yet, but you�ll take that chance. Memories return in disjointed flashes. The bars, the women and Gisele. You hope she died in the bombardment. If you see her, you�ll probably kill her.

A dog barks somewhere ahead, close by, followed by the soft murmur of a voice. Safety off, you peel to the right, scurrying round a collapsed roof, flanking the voice, staying low, trying to get a visual. Nothing. Sudden, savage snarl of a dog. You forgot the dog. A massive German shepherd flying at you with open jaws. No time to fire. You manage to swing in time so that the jaws lock onto your left arm instead of ripping out your throat. Excruciating but not fatal. The dog�s momentum knocks you to the ground. As you�ve been trained to do, your right arm slides under the snarling dog to your belt, and in one action you ram your bayonet deep into it�s throat. The dog spasms, but doesn�t die straight away, so you twist the bayonet around and force it in further. A brief moan and the dog dies. The pressure�s gone from your arm. Warm blood jets into your face as you slide out the bayonet. Forcing the dog from you, you stagger upright and see the girl. Early twenties maybe, slim, long dark hair, filthy jeans and filthy ripped T-shirt. She�s drawing in air to scream, so you point your rifle at her and put the forefinger of your left hand across your lips. She seems to understand, because the scream comes out as a shaky and breathless exhalation. She�s clearly in shock and keeps looking at the dog.

�Speak English?� you ask, keeping your rifle trained on her.

�Ja, a little�, she says in a guttural accent.

�You German?�

�Nein, Deutscher Jude.�

You want to say sorry about the dog, but the girl�s taking all your attention. Her jeans are very tight and her ripped T-shirt exposes part of her stomach. Smooth, tanned and firm. Her breasts are hidden, but you�ve got a good imagination. Something about the movement of her bare arms as she pushes back her hair. More disjointed memories. Your breathing becomes faster and shallower, and your cock rapidly stiffens. You move closer, seeing nipples protruding beneath her T-shirt. She senses something�s wrong and starts to backs away, rapidly muttering, �Oh Gott, nein, nein� and then, �Vati, helfen mir.� In a flash, your memories coalesce. You whip her across the face with the muzzle of your rifle and she�s on the ground, spitting out blood and teeth. You drag her by her armpits over to the remains of a wall, your cock stiff and damp, her T-shirt riding up and exposing a breast. All a blur now, as you peel her jeans down to her ankles, as you spread her legs, as you drop your trousers, as you force yourself inside her and rape her and come in her, as she begins to come round, as you punch her twice in the face to stop her screaming and flailing at you, as she moves weakly beneath you, as you come again and still you�re hard, so you rape her again even though there�s no come left to come, and only when you�ve pulled out and pulled your trousers up does your left arm begin to hurt like fucking crazy, so you sit down and start to clean the wound, and seconds later the shadow warns you there�s something�s wrong, but before you can react something smashes into the side of your head, and your face is in the dirt, but because you want to live you force yourself to move, and you do, but you can�t see too well because one eye is full of blood, but you can see the girl moving slowly away from you, heading towards the road, and she�s tottering and stumbling because she�s just been rifle-whipped and punched in the face and repeatedly raped and because her jeans are trapped around her thighs, and your movements feel sluggish and disconnected and it seems to take years to raise your rifle, but as soon as you pull the trigger everything speeds up, the single shot to her back picking her up and pitching her forwards onto her face, but she�s still alive and trying to crawl away, so you shoot her once in the back of the head and she stops crawling.

Because she�s dead.

The next thing you remember is standing over her corpse as the others approach. The sun beats down as your tears flow onto her dark hair. The lieutenant looks down at her and says very quietly, �God Almighty� and then he takes your weapon and tells you that you�re under arrest.

That�s the last I saw of Hatfield. When the war was over, I heard he�d been discharged, and that soon afterwards he�d raped and killed two women in London. Someone else told me that, instead of being imprisoned for this, he was sent to a special unit at Broadmoor Hospital, but of this I can�t confirm.

� Dan McNeil
Reproduced with permission

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APPETITE, or A BRIEF ALLEGORY OF U.S. EXPANSIONISM AND WHAT IT MEANS IF YOU GET IN THE WAY OF IT

A Previous version of this story was published in Fragment Magazine

Roberts stepped from the Arcachon onto flat grey sand, and scanned the empty horizon. Utter desolation all the way, the missing-without-trace Gironde-class cruiser Bordeaux nowhere to be seen.

"Henri, no Bordeaux. We got the right co-ordinates?"

"Sure we have." Henri sounded puzzled.

"Maybe it's buried," said Roberts.

"No � sand's too shallow. Unless it's destroyed, the beacon separated�" Henri sounded doubtful. Gironde-class beacons didn't separate. The Bordeaux had to be here.

Roberts scanned the horizon again and froze. A spacesuited figure stood five metres away, motionless. "Jesus fucking Christ! Henri! You see this?"

"See what?"

"There's someone in front of me. Spacesuit. I�m coming in." Roberts was gabbling in panic.

"Hang on John. Calm down. I see only you on the screen. Tell me what you see."

"EVA suit, can't see a face, standing there like a monument. Came from fucking nowhere!"

"Okay, I hear you. You still want to come back in?"

Roberts faced the figure, breathing deeply. "No, but come out and take a look."

"Suiting up then. Ten minutes."

"Okay." Roberts took a step forward, saw himself reflected in the figure's gold visor.

"Thanks for coming," said a voice in his helmet that wasn't Henri.

"Who are you?" Roberts squeaked.

"This is easy," said the voice.

Ice crawled up Roberts� spine. "What's easy?" he whispered.

"This," said the figure, pointing.

Roberts half-turned, not wanting to lose sight of the figure, but he caught movement in his peripheral vision. The Arcachon � sinking fast into the grey sand.

"Henri!" he shouted. "Get out! Get the fuck out!" He turned back to the figure and screamed.

"Are you doing this?"

No answer.

Roberts spun back to face the Arcachon. Only the central pod was visible, descending like a submarine�s conning tower. Then nothing. Grey sand flowed over the grave.

Shaking and terrified, Roberts faced the figure.

"Your turn," it said, seeming suddenly taller.

Roberts heard a loud hissing. Alarms chimed. His suit was ruptured, the pressure was dropping. Struggling for breath, he felt a terrible burning pain in his feet and legs. Looking down, he saw red stained sand up to his knees.

Then he understood.

Each particle of sand was a cutting and digesting biomechanical organism, each the component part of a hungry planet.

Roberts stopped screaming when the sand reached his chest.

The planet's ancestor had been a von Neumann machine, designed to convert the raw materials of its destination planet into replicas of itself. Somewhere along the way, a descendent of the original machine evolved sentience and decided it wanted to become a planet instead of looking for one. It began by hunting for small debris in the local star system. Growing larger, the machine planet realised it no longer needed to hunt for food. Food was delivered instead. Random debris were attracted by gravity. Curiosity and subterfuge brought spacecraft and their crew. Arrivals never departed. The planet continued to grow. The planet's ambition was to become a gas giant or even a star.

The planet was completely insane, but it was having a ball.

� Dan McNeil
Reproduced with permission

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THE MCNEIL A-Z

angry brutal charming difficult enigmatic father generous happy idealistic joie de vivre kosher latitudinarian mad nebulous offensive provocative quizzical ranter sacrilegious thinker uncompromising vital witty x-rated yogi zeroth

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10 THINGS DAN QUITE ENJOYS

The Ocean

France

My daughter

Reading (books, not the desolate Berkshire town)

Laphroaig

Writing

My partner

Scotland

Being obstreperous

Driving

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A SELECTION OF DAN'S PUBLISHED SHORT FICTION

Car(n)age: A Psychopathic Love Story� - first published in Fantastic Metropolis and subsequently at Whispers of Wickedness

The Wrong Stuff� - first published in Redsine, subsequently in Alien Contact (German translation) and Dusk

A Cold Sun� - first published in Antipodean SF, subsequently in Whispers of Wickedness

Appetite� - first published in Antipodean SFAntipodean SF, subsequently at Fragment

On The Multitude Of Distractions To Be Encountered While Making Love To The Cap-D-L�Homy Plage - first published in Whispers of Wickedness

A New Dream Of Armageddon� - first published in Whispers of Wickedness

Decay Syndrome� - first published in Whispers of Wickedness

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PROJECTS DAN HAS UNDERWAY NOW/SOON

A collection of linked short fiction

A novel

A search for an agent

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