From the Dark Side Excerpt: Mark BurningHawk Baxter’s “Exo”

The final excerpt from the From the Dark Side anthology is Mark BurningHawk Baxter’s “Exo.” “Exo” is an interesting story with an incredible twist, but no matter how I sliced it into excerpt form, it’s tough to give you an accurate preview of what to expect without giving the ending away. So this little introductory snippet will have to suffice until you can grab the anthology and read the rest.

You can also find out more about Mark by visiting his official website.

Don’t forget, From the Dark Side goes on sale tomorrow, Friday July 9, 2010, for $4.99 on Amazon and Smashwords. All proceeds go to The Letters and Light Organization.

Exo

Hard-driven rain lashed the windshield. No wind should make a noise like that—a howling keen that echoed down the artificial canyons between the skyscrapers. Surely it deafened the shuffling lines of people shrouded in transparent organic bubble wraps, moving in an endless river along the sidewalks and spilling over into the streets.

Eddies and whorls in the stream of displaced humanity caused the patrol car to slink through and around knots of congestion, guiding itself carefully along a weaving course. Now and then pulses of directed sound from the siren made one or another blurrily glimpsed face flinch, another mummy-wrapped body stumble out of the way.

They looked like shrink-wrapped packages on some Dante-esque assembly line to Officer Byron. Hollow Faces through rain-streaked membranes scoured of hope and vitality; Las Vegas was never meant to be a refugee center, but the super-storms didn’t know that; nor care.

The ping of the car’s collision alarm was simultaneous with the soft jolt as something bounced off the front bumper. No, Byron thought; not something, someone. Someone in the ubiquitous uniform of a refugee, grey organoplast.

The specialized stem cells that inflated pockets of insulating air would also have protected the person inside the suit from any damage, as would the slow speed of the patrol car. Differently specialized cells provided traction for feet on slippery pavement, and more such cells allowed the officers inside the car to vaguely see a contorted face through the permeable membrane over it.

The third cop on the team, Officer Patricks impatiently jabbed the override controls and keyed on the external pickups. Before the compression kicked in, a din of pelting rain and shrieking wind made all three cops flinch visibly. “Come on, reffie, move it,” Patricks said. “Center’s just on the corner there, about 100 feet on your right, at the end of the block.” He pulsed the siren once, briefly; enough to jar the refugee blocking their way off the hood; not enough to cause pain.

Though the bundle slumped against the hood flinched and shuddered a bit, it did not move. The high, hysterical voice of a young woman—a girl, really—wavered through the car’s speakers. Compression made it sound like she was speaking from the bottom of an ocean.

“And God appeared unto the Prophet Kaitlynn, saying, “‘You shall know me, for my eyes shall appear full of wrath within the tattered sky! From my judging eyes shall I spin scourges from the clouds! My nets shall sweep all peoples from the beautiful Earth which I have made!’” She gulped a gasping breath through the membrane of her suit, and continued. “‘All my beautiful world shall be cleansed, and the only hope is for those who believe in me, the one true and wrathful God of your forefathers!’”

Patricks cursed and touched the siren icon again, longer this time. The woman outside wailed, but still didn’t get off the hood of the car. People started to turn and peer through the curtains of wind-blown rain to take in the commotion.