Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

His footsteps rang down the hallway in quick succession. Even though he could hardly see the floor in front of him, Mark could hear the footfalls to the rear, gaining. Adrenaline rushed through his veins, but his leg muscles were beginning to cramp.

“I can’t keep this up,” he wheezed in a panic. “I’m dead.”

As if to underscore the point, more echoes emerged from the darkness—grimy sneakers, tattered dress shoes, and heavy, labored breathing. The night terrors were closing in with a speed and singlemindedness that belied the fact they’d once been human.

A stitch had been growing in Mark’s side, and at this crucial juncture it flared up, joining his legs in demanding an immediate and unconditional rest. “No…” Mark said. “Don’t you understand…you worthless…appendages? If I stop…you die!”

Despite this exhortation, he continued to slow. Moments later, he felt the first probing fingertips on his back and neck.

Flying…

Ben was touching the sky.

He soared high over the lands below, crashing through flocks of birds, tearing through clouds, skimming low over lakes and rivers. An irrepressible grin was plastered across Ben’s face, and an incredible rush of life surged through his body.

Nothing could slow him down.

In the back of his mind, though, two darker thoughts churned beneath the exhilaration, the raw life force: a nagging suspicion that he was dreaming again, and Terrie’s face, contorted with shock and disbelief.

“I…I don’t think we have much time left…” Dave’s voice sounded thin, tired, even through the static.

“Hang on!” Sally said. “I’ll get help. I’ll do something!”

“It’s too late for that, I think,” said Dave. “You need to get out of here before it’s too late.”

“No!” Sally cried.

The cable had been strained to its breaking point, and it gave way with a sharp metallic twang. The steel beam, deprived of its support, toppled over, taking tons of concrete and metal with it. Four other cables were snapped by the rain of debris, and the pillars they supported collapsed as well.

Few places are as intimidating as a dark corridor at night.

The absence of the usual background noise makes any sound seem twice as loud, and any doors along the hallway’s length were fertile breeding ground for the imagination. The one on Jameson’s left seemed to be slowly breathing in and out, while the one on his right seemed to have simply faded away, appearing only in moonlit snatches.

The light switches could only be worked with a special key—part of the latest round of cost-saving measures—so there was no prospect of light ahead. Moonlight only did so much.

Something skittered noisily across the floor in front of him. A rat? A bauble spilled from a thief’s bag? He wasn’t sure which was worse, but the answer wasn’t long in coming.

Dark winter nights, filled with drifts of snow and gusts of wind, are a fine time to spend behind an antique picture window with a blazing fire in the hearth.

They are not the best time to be on the road.

On this particular occasion, the prayers of thousands of schoolchildren had given the asphalt a sheath of ice and a sprinkling of snow. The moonless night had sheathed the hazard beneath a light crystalline dust.

Harry, preoccupied, didn’t even notice that his Buick had begun to spin out of control until the front tires had already skidded off the road. By the time he stood on the brake, the hydraulics were snarled in the foliage and snapped.

A cold sort of darkness closed in; Harry’s last conscious thoughts turned to the package on the seat beside him.

Kevin had never liked Emmett very much, and the feeling was mutual. But, given the proximity of their cubicles, the two were bound to run into each other frequently.

And they did.

Kevin returned from lunch one day find all his pictures on the floor and his cubicle swaying like San Francisco during a 6.9. Emmett was on his end, Allen wrench in hand.

“What the hell?”

“I measured. Your cubicle’s six inches wider than mine, so I’m just correcting that little oversight,” said Emmett.

“How can you do that?” Kevin cried.

“Oh, it’s easy. The stuff’s all modular; all you need is the right tool.”

“I’ll be blunt,” Ken says. “I can’t fix this. Have you got a cell phone?”

“No,” you say.

“Perfect. Wonderful. Great. Fantastic.” Ken mutters. How far do you think it is to the nearest gas station?”

“I haven’t seen anything but wild grass for a long time,” you say, “I get the feeling it’s a long walk in either direction.”

Ken swears thickly and fluently. “Well, what do we do now?”

You look up at the approaching dusk. “Got a flashlight?”

“No.”

“Then we stay here. At least until morning.”

I’d never seen him so pale or gaunt. His eyes were sunken, riveted to the bank of monitors in front of him, and his clothes hung loosely from his emaciated frame. He clearly hadn’t seen the sun or any other light except his flat screens for weeks.

“My God, you look awful,” I said.

“The outside reflects the inside,” he replied without moving.

“You need to get up and do something,” I said. “You’re letting these people do whatever they like with your stuff. Kevin is out there now using your charge card, and Mary’s been tooling around in your car.”

“They’re doing what I’d like to do,” came the reply. “What the hell’s wrong with that?”

“You’re not doing it and they are. You’re letting them take over your life.”

A hoarse laugh. “Maybe so. Maybe I took over theirs. They’re kids, you know, really. Away from home for the first time, going out, establishing identities. It’s what I’ve wanted all along…”

“What you wanted?”

“You heard me.”

The crowd below began to cheer loudly even before Steyr stepped onto the podium; cries of joy and praise filtered up from below, bringing a smile to the young Prime Minister’s face.

“Citizens!” she cried, her voice echoing from speakers up and down the plaza. Steyr had to wait a moment as the cheers died down before she spoke again. “We stand at the threshold of the greatest event in the history of our fair nation! The dream of my mother, her mother, and all the Prime Ministers back to the foundation will now at last come to fruition! We have fought, we have suffered, and we have triumphed over all who would oppose us!”

“Victory!” came the cry from below.

“All resistance has been crushed. All are now included in our glorious vision. Only the final step remains: we shall once again go forth, and attain what eluded even the Founding Ministers themselves: a victory so absolute that a thousand years will not dull its memory!”

Louisa had once opened her eyes, but soon closed them again, without apparent consciousness. This had been a proof of life, however, of service to her sister; and Henrietta, though perfectly incapable of being in the same room with Louisa, was kept, by the agitation of hope and fear, from a return of her own insensibility. Mary, too, was growing calmer.

The surgeon was with them almost before it had seemed possible. They were sick with horror, while he examined; but he was not hopeless. The head had received a severe contusion, but he had seen greater injuries recovered from: he was by no means hopeless; he spoke cheerfully.

That he did not regard it as a desperate case, that he did not say a few hours must end it, was at first felt, beyond the hope of most; and the ecstasy of such a reprieve, the rejoicing, deep and silent, after a few fervent ejaculations of gratitude to Heaven had been offered, may be conceived.

The tone, the look, with which “Thank God!” was uttered by Captain Wentworth, Anne was sure could never be forgotten by her; nor the sight of him afterwards, as he sat near a table, leaning over it with folded arms and face concealed, as if overpowered by the various feelings of his soul, and trying by prayer and reflection to calm them.

Louisa’s limbs had escaped. There was no injury but to the head.