Not Good Enoughby Milo James Fowler

EVER SINCE THAT GODAWFUL day them Horrors sucked ol' Joe up into their mothership to have their way with him, poking and prodding and twisting his damn DNA into too many shapes like a freakish clown with balloons at a kid's birthday party, he's suffered through all manner of difficulty. Some from the Horrors themselves. Most from regular folks like you and me.

All it takes is a mean apocalypse, and people they change. Ain't so normal anymore. Not so human. Sure, they might look alright on the outside. Two arms, two legs, two eyes. Maybe a little dirty, ragged around the edges like a pair of frayed blue jeans. No tentacles or slimy skin or claws. But their souls are different. The light inside has gone dim.

They don't listen to the voice of their better selves no more. Their conscience is hoarse. It's the animals inside they hear now. Hunger and thirst. Desire. Survival. Nothing else much matters.

"Think they've got real food?" Little Barry he does his best to keep up with Joe's long strides.

"Might have." Joe he keeps on moving. Flamethrower rig clunking over one shoulder, big ol' backpack stuffed with provisions over the other. His boots strike the cracked asphalt in a steady rhythm with no sign of slowing down.

On either side of this road lay the ruins of blown-out buildings burned to cinders. Frozen in their lanes sit the rusted hulks of abandoned automobiles long-since picked over by scavengers. Skeletons now. Nothing left worth taking. Down the middle, along the faded white dashes with weeds springing up between breaks in the pavement, that's where Joe walks, heading due east.

Toward the Q. The Murph. A last bastion of civilization, such as it is. He's heard tell they take in strays there. That they have food, and plenty of it. The real stuff.

Barry squints up at the hellish sun and drags a bare forearm across his dark brow, collecting warm beads of sweat. He adjusts the satchel slung across his back, heavy with scavenged canned goods. Some human food. Mostly dog and cat, from when there used to be lots of both running around. Before they got themselves hunted to near-extinction. Folks can't afford to be too picky these days. You eat what you can catch. Or what you can find. Ain't nobody selling drive-through.

"Think they've got crops? You know, growing inside?" Barry licks his chapped lips and remembers corn fresh off the cob. Tearing into it with all his teeth, warm butter drooling down his chin, sweet corn bursting open with each bite.

"Possible." Joe he keeps his answers short. Hopes the kid will shut up eventually. Hasn't worked yet, and they've been hoofing it together for about a week now.

There will come a day when the kid will grow too tired to talk. Too thirsty. Too weak. Joe knows it to be true. And he plans to make it to the Q long before then.

"The Horrors leave 'em alone cuz they've got gun turrets up in the stands, the nosebleeds where people used to watch the big games on Sundays. And the Horrors don't want to get their aircars damaged, so they steer clear, just fly on over to other parts of town where it's easier to grab folks. General Jack Murphy, he says, 'Keep on flyin', you mother—"

"Language," Joe says.

He ain't the boy's father. Not even close. But the kid's mother got herself slaughtered by them Horrors right before his young eyes. Least Joe can do is guide the rascals' squirrely tongue in the right direction.

"—don't you even think about it," Barry goes on, reciting his litany. Or his catechism. He repeats it religiously either way, seems to bolster his courage. Puts a little spring in his step, thinking things might get better again someday. "That's what General Jack Murphy says, and the Horrors they fly on by cuz they've got prey elsewhere to be had."

"Ain't no Jack Murphy."

Not for years and years. Since long before the days when Joe had a family to call his own. Wonderful wife. Two amazing daughters. When tears sting his eyes from time to time, those three girls are the reason why. Because they're gone, sure. Mostly because he's afraid he'll never see them again.

Barry looks up at Joe, but Joe he keeps his gaze set on the path ahead and any dangers that might spring up along the way. Never can be too careful. Scavengers. Eggheads. Not to mention the Horrors themselves.

"That's what folks said about you," the kid says. Sports a big ol' grin, bright as sunshine. "That you were made-up. They even had a song. 'Roadkill Joe is a very old soul, can't die cuz he's a freak!'" Drawing out that last word in two syllables.

Apt description. Joe knows full-well he's freakish. How else would you describe a man who's been run over, shot, stabbed, skewered, burned, and blown up more times than he can remember? Some of it he's done to his own self.

Suicidal? Maybe. Experimental is more like. Them Horrors mangled his DNA something fierce, making him...not-human. As far as he can tell, his body refuses to die. No matter how much he'd like it to, after all these years roaming the wasted earth. By all indications, there will never be any eternal rest for ol' Joe.

Why'd they do it? Select him special only to drop him into the middle of a highway where he got himself run over by a big rig and a couple other midsize vehicles? Maybe that was their experiment. To see if what they'd done to him would stick.

Always strikes him as odd, thinking of them Horrors as able to manage equipment necessary to screw around with his insides. The monsters he's seen are mindless brutes with only one thing on their minds: grabbing folks and laying eggs inside their skulls. Procreation and feeding themselves on human flesh, that's all the Horrors are ever interested in. Nothing requiring fine motor skills.

Which sort of begs the question: Is there more than one type of alien creature? Do the brains keep themselves up in the mothership while the brawn keep to the planet's surface, terrorizing the natives?

"Joe?"

"Yeah."

"Don't you think it might be so?"

"Maybe." Joe shrugs his shoulders non-committal like.

Truth is, he lost track of the one-sided conversation. The boy can prattle on like nobody's business. For his own sanity, Joe's got to tune out from time to time.

Don't need no boy wonder. That's what he said when the kid wanted to tag along. He meant it. But the boy wasn't shook off so easy.

"There's gotta be. Kids, I mean," Barry says now, kicking at a self-important milkweed as he passes by. "There were some on my street, y'know. Back before the Horrors got Momma. Most were taken. And we ain't seen any since we been hiking, have we?"

That's what he calls this. Hiking. The desolation does nothing to dampen his enthusiasm. He's on an adventure. When the buzz of an aircar rips through the sky in the distance and Joe has to drag him to the ground and duck under the blanket he carries, the one that hides their heat signatures, the kid holds his breath, curled up tight like a mole in his hidey hole. He doesn't get scared. He doesn't get sad. Not even when he mentions his dear departed Momma. He takes everything as it comes.

Kids are resilient, folks used to say. Joe never believed that hogwash. But this Barry, he's something else. He just might prove them right. Or suffer from some mean post-traumatic stress once the shock wears off. Joe hopes not. Wouldn't wish that on anybody.

Except maybe them Horrors. What he wouldn't give to stress them out some.

His flamethrower's a good start. But it only works on close contact. One on one. He hasn't figured how to knock their vehicles out of the air. Or hell, why not dream big? Maybe someday he'll figure a way to knock their mothership out of orbit. That gleaming hunk of metal that competes with the moon's reflected light some nights. If he lives long enough, anything is possible, right? A hundred years from now, who knows what arsenal he'll have at his disposal.

"...maybe even a school," Barry goes on. No stopping him. "Wouldn't that be something?" He chuckles dryly to himself. Self-deprecating. "Never thought I woulda talked about school like it's a good thing. But heck, if they've got one, I think I'd be okay with it."

"Wait and see," Joe says. Cautioning the kid. Warning him against hope. The boy seems high on the stuff right now, and when his hopes get dashed, as they most surely will in this broken-up world, he'll plummet to the paralyzing depths of despair. A dangerous place for anybody.