999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [3]
Finally, and most important, there seems to be a new generation of readers, growing now beyond the core audience,* clamoring for
this stuff. These readers were kids or fetuses during the last boom; they discovered the writers of the 1970s and 1980s in reprints and secondhand editions and now want more—and new.
We might, actually, be on the rising crest of a new boom.
Part Six: This Book
As for me, I can’t lose. If this book turns out to be revolutionary, helps to revive the field, kills the ghetto, and starts a third Golden Age, so be it. If it doesn’t, my backup story is that ** is merely a celebration of the success the field has already achieved—final proof, between two covers, that it is a literary genre.
Actually, I’ll be the happiest editor in the world if you see fit to put this volume on your shelf between Dark Forces and Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural.
Revolution or celebration? You choose.
But as I said at the top of this screed, this book is a feast.
Time to dive in.
Al Sarrantonio
May 1999
Kim Newman
AMERIKANSKI DEAD AT THE MOSCOW MORGUE
When I casually contacted Kim ‘Newman by E-mail to ask if he had anything he’d be interested in showing me for 999, he politely wrote hack, almost instantly, that most of what he was working on these days was in a longer length than what I seemed to be looking for. When I gently persisted, asking him to show me something longer, I almost instantly received the following tale, about American “invaders” in Communist Russia, by return E-mail.
I was flabbergasted at how good it was—not because Kim Newman, the vampire-expert author of Anno Dracula and The Bloody Red Baron, wrote it, since I already knew that he’s quietly and systematically become one of the best writers in the field, but because I just couldn’t believe that something so wonderful could instantly appear on my computer screen just because I asked for it. Ask and ye shall receive, indeed!
Kim Newman is also known as a sometime actor, film critic, and broadcaster; more of his fictive magic can be found in such work as Bad Dreams, The Night Mayor, and, with Eugene Byrne, Back in the USSA.
At the railway station in Borodino, Evgeny Chirkov was separated from his unit. As the locomotive slowed, he hopped from their carriage to the platform, under orders to secure, at any price, cigarettes and chocolate. Another unknown crisis intervened and the steam-driven antique never truly stopped. Tripping over his rifle, he was unable to reach the outstretched hands of his comrades. The rest of the unit, jammed halfway through windows or hanging out of doors, laughed and waved. A jet of steam from a train passing the other way put salt on his tail, and he dodged, tripping again. Sergeant Trauberg found the pratfall hilarious, forgetting he had pressed a thousand rubles on the private. Chirkov ran and ran but the locomotive gained speed. When he emerged from the canopied platform, seconds after the last carriage, white sky poured down. Looking at the black-shingled track-bed, he saw a flattened outline in what was once a uniform, wrists and ankles wired together, neck against a gleaming rail, head long gone under sharp wheels. The method, known as “making sleepers,” was favored along railway lines. Away from stations, twenty or thirty were dealt with at one time. Without heads, Amerikans did no harm.
Legs boiled from steam, face and hands frozen from winter, he wandered through the station. The cavernous space was subdivided by sandbags. Families huddled like pioneers expecting an attack by Red Indians, luggage drawn about in a circle, last bullets saved for women and children. Chirkov spat mentally; America had invaded his imagination, just as his political officers warned. Some refugees were coming from Moscow, others fleeing to the city. There