Jess slammed the door shut almost before I had gotten all the way in the apartment. She threw her back against the polished wood, sweat standing out on her forehead and forearms.

“Jess, relax,” I said, “the building has a quantum floor plan. The Pastors have no idea how to get here let alone how to actually see the door.”

“What the Pastors do have, Alfie, is faith. And they have bucketsful. If they believe hard enough, no amount of clever quantum physics can stop them.”

I smirked but the sound of chanting coming down the hall cut off my witty remark. Instead, I grabbed Jess’ hand, turned toward the window, and leapt shoulder-first. We hit the sand on a beach somewhere in Greece. I rolled to my feet, the killswitch in my hand, and thumbed it. The Pastor that was climbing through after us was sliced in half as the connection between my multi-million dollar luxury apartment in LA and the five-star hotel window whose view I had enjoyed for six years was severed.

Ann rolled over and threw her arm out across the empty space on the other side of the mattress, the empty space that should have been Jim. She woke immediately, fully alert and scanning the room for any signs of trouble. She could dimly remember a time when waking was a slow, luxurious process full of stretching and blinking and drifting from dream to reality and back. In the months since the outbreak, waking up had become like flicking a light switch.

She didn’t see Jim anywhere in the room and the bedroom door was shut and intact. She closed her eyes and listened. At first, she didn’t recognize what she was hearing – a bird singing. She sat with her eyes closed, a smile spreading across her face. She sat like that, listening, for a long moment, just enjoying the simple beauty.

Ann’s eyes popped open as she realized where Jim was. A bird singing meant that winter was finally over. The bright sunlight peeking around the edges of the heavy curtains hinted at a gorgeous early spring day.

Jim was getting ready to grill out.

She climbed off the bed over the footboard, shaking the blankets and sheets from around her legs as she stumbled to the door. She threw it opened and stopped short of hollering Jim’s name. Bellowing like that was sure to call their attention and that was the last thing they needed. She calmly walked down the stairs. She turned the corner at the bottom and could see into the kitchen. Sure enough, Jim was there, apron around his waist, peering out the now not-barricaded patio doors. He was using his favorite spatula to shield his eyes from the glare.

“Don’t,” Ann said plain and simple.

“Honey,” Jim didn’t even turn around, “I’ll be careful.”

“Jim,” Ann said in the way that reminded her of her mother.

“Hon,” Jim cut her off, turning to her with a smile on his face. It had been so long since she had seen such a genuine smile, on him or even in the mirror, that it took her aback. “I’m tired of this. It is a gorgeous day outside and the backyard is free and clear. I have these last few chicken pieces and come hell or high water I am going to barbecue them.”

“But the smell. The…cooking meat. It’ll bring ‘em.”

“I’ll be careful. You sit upstairs in the bathroom and watch me with the rifle.” He smiled even more widely. “You’re a crack shot, hon. You’ll keep any zombies that climb over the fence off me and you and me will have barbecue chicken for dinner!"

Tony turned another beige corner. Three days and he was still pretty much lost as soon as he left his cubicle. He found himself in a semi-familiar hallway lined with small conference rooms. He walked slowly down the hall, reading each nameplate outside each office. Abbadon. Bael. Cayum. Deumos. Eurynome.

"Who the hell named these rooms?" Tony muttered to himself. He finally read the nameplate he was looking for - Leviathan. He looked down to the meeting request he had printed off to make sure, saw the word Leviathan listed as the location, shrugged his shoulders, and pushed the door open.

There, lying on the spacious faux-wood conference table in the center of the room was a mostly naked woman. In the dim light, it was hard to make out, but he thought it might have been Lucinda from Accounts Receivable. The gauzy fabric that barely covered her left Tony momentarily stunned. It took him a second to notice the hooded figures ringing the room's other three walls. In fact, he was oblivious to anything but the half-naked woman that may have been Lucinda from Accounts Receivable until one of the hooded figures stepped forward, brandishing an ornate knife.

Tony jumped back toward the door. "Wrong meeting! Definitely the wrong meeting! So sorry, I'm just a temp so, you know, no need to kill me or anything..."

The hooded figure with the knife reached up with his free hand and pushed back his hood to reveal the smiling, doughy face of Doug, Tony's direct supervisor. "Tony, Tony, calm down, bud. You're in the right place. This is the monthly projections meeting. Jeez, man, when you said you didn't have a lot of corporate experience, I thought you were exaggerating." He let out a laugh and shook his head. "Anyway, Mike's got your robe. Put it on, take this knife, cut out Lucinda's heart as a tribute to the unholy patron that keeps us rich and prosperous, and let's hit Famous Dave's for lunch!" Doug looked around the room. "I'm buying!"

COMPULSION
(Tuning) / Ribbon Head – Thorns of Life (0:36 + 4:27 = 5:03)

She put the bottle down with a clink. He knew it was empty without turning around – bottles with liquid in them make a thunk, not a clink.

He turned the carrots over and over under the faucet, washing the dirt out of the creases of their flesh. He could hear her staring at him, feel the silence of her desperation tugging at his shirt. He could smell her need for validation, the yawning pit of hate that called him to spin around on her and make a snide comment or, better yet, let loose with a stream of profanity and degradation that would force her to acknowledge she was still alive.

He put the carrot on the cutting board next to the sink, picked up the celery stalks, and plunged them under the cool, clean water. He turned and twisted them precisely, making sure to rinse every trace of soil. He felt the weight of her need lift from him and she lifted herself from the dining room chair. He heard the soft, bare footsteps as she stumbled to the sideboard, felt the hinges of the cabinet shudder open, and knew there was another bottle waiting to console her.

 (199 WORDS)

BACKSPACE
(More Guitar) / I Hate New York – Thorns of Life (0:29 + 3:58 = 4:27)

“Telemetry’s looking fine, Schwitz. Let’s downshift and see if we can’t drop momentum to negative without retro-deleting any possibility waves.”

Schwitz looked up from her readscreen, her green eyes hazy behind the data filters on her navgoggles. “What,” she managed after a moment of working her jaw silently. Negs smiled that devil’s grin of his as he shrugged. “My dad will effin’ kill me if we wreck. Not to mention all the possible future-damage we could cause if we screw it up.”

“Isn’t that what makes it awesome?” Negs looked at Schwitz, she looked at him, and, with the ghost of a smile, she punched the BACKSPACE button, time swirled, possibilities collapsed, and she and Negs found themselves in the space behind space, existence’s backstage.

(125 WORDS)