Free Fear the Abyss: 22 Terrifying Tales of Cosmic Horror by Jack Ketchum, Tim Waggoner, Harlan Ellison, Jeyn Roberts, Post Mortem Press, Gary Braunbeck, Michael Arnzen, Lawrence Connolly Page B

waffling-baffling, topsy-turvy-curvy.
    Sex with Fynn had been fine.
    Pills were better.
    His sleeping tent mates appeared as distorted beasts, their snoring an alien rumbling from reality's deepest depths. Bliss enwrapped him like a soft shroud, leeching away his self-hatred.
    And when, some slippery-time later, the world rolled and shivered, he thought it just part of the high. But motion surrounded him, tugged at him. The high's clutches slipped down his skin like warm, slick tentacles. Mind sharper, animal panic stabbed his heart before his brain assembled the flurry of movements and sounds of his tent mates into a cohesive thought: incoming artillery. A concussive blast thudded. Instinct and training had him up, pants on, helmet on, running for the bunker.
    Through the tent flaps, visions slapped him—red and orange flames, brown sand, black smoke, blacker sky. Acrid smell of burning tents and spent artillery shells. He flowed among the swarm of people toward the main building's wide, blank north wall. The hard packed ground shifting and rolling beneath him. Bodies pressed close, the stink of sweat and panic. Down the ramp, through the open steel doors, into the bunker's concrete depths. He turned into the room for medical staff. Finding a spot on the hard, cold floor he leaned against a wall that vibrated with each landing shell and every volley fired back.
    By now, drones would be up, scanning, relaying enemy artillery locations to their own cannons.
    War by proxy, Fynn had called it. For centuries, man fought face-to-face. One man kills another. Now exoarmor hides our faces. But the armor loses a leg, the person loses a leg. We should send machines to kill machines. Or send the soldier home and let the leg keep fighting.
    Teller glanced around the room, a flickering overhead lights casting everyone in shadow. Some stood, most sat. A captain did a head count, a corporal in tow. Teller spotted Fynn, hunched over, typing at her tablet. He didn't let his eyes linger. That typing. In the mess hall, the break room, at the infirmary, after fucking.
    Letters? Reports? She'd been a researcher in Vancouver before she'd been drafted. She told him how lonely she'd been, how much she'd sacrificed for her career. How she wanted to save life, maintain it, create it. She wanted to have children and it pained her that she never would.
    Maybe she was writing about him. The research talk was bullshit. She'd decided to record his junkie life after catching him smuggling pills. He'd been bribing Sallen, an MP whose thumbprint could open any door on the base, for access to the dispensary. Teller had been caught before, but most of the docs had been as fucked up as him by this place. He had connections to feed their secret needs or kinks. A balance. Keep each others' secrets. Colonel Brice didn't have to know anything.
    But Fynn had offered to help him get clean. She'd give him pills, but control the dosage and amount. She just wanted to look at whatever he put in the incinerator. Maybe take a few limbs.
    What kind of surgeon did that?
    Maybe the tablet had the answers.
    *****
    The infirmary hallways bowed down and up and around, a bubble of right angles.
    Still feeling the pills.
    Sallen, bought off with some kinky Korean porn, unlocked Fynn's office. With her in surgery, he had no better time. Teller stepped in, the room big enough for a desk, chair and filing cabinet, and Sallen locked the door behind him. The turning tumblers sounded monstrously huge.
    Sorting through several tablets scattered on her desk, he found the one she typed on. The one without military markings on its case. He also knew her password from watching her enter it. "Herbert".
    Her documents folder held dozens of files, but between the pills and the medical jargon he couldn't make heads or tails of them. The message center was surprisingly empty. He'd thought she'd have friends back home writing her. He opened her sent messages and found it full of messages. Over