Hauntings by Ellen Datlow

throat and I forced it back down.
    A lone fly, fat and glistening, crawled from inside the bag and flew lazily towards Hadley. He slowly rose to his feet and braced himself, as if against a body blow. He watched it rise and flit a clumsy path through the air. Then he broke the moment by stepping back, his hands flailing and hitting it—I heard the slap of his hand—and letting a nauseous sound escape his lips.
    When I stood up, my temples throbbed and my legs weakened. I held onto a nearby casket, my throat filled with something rancid.
    â€œClose it,” he said like a man with his mouth full. “Close it.”
    My arms went rubbery. After bracing myself, I lifted one leg and kicked the lid. It rang out like an artillery shot. Pressure pounded into my ears like during a rapid descent.
    Hadley put his hands on his haunches and lowered his head, taking deep breaths through his mouth. “Jesus,” he croaked.
    I saw movement. Pembry stood next to the line of coffins, her face pulled up in sour disgust. “What—is—that—smell?”
    â€œIt’s okay.” I found I could work one arm and tried what I hoped looked like an off-handed gesture. “Found the problem. Had to open it up though. Go sit down.”
    Pembry brought her hands up around herself and went back to her seat.
    I found that with a few more deep breaths, the smell dissipated enough to act. “We have to secure it,” I told Hadley.
    He looked up from the floor and I saw his eyes as narrow slits. His hands were in fists and his broad torso stood fierce and straight. At the corner of his eyes, wetness glinted. He said nothing.
    It became cargo again as I fastened the latches. We strained to fit it back into place. In a matter of minutes, the other caskets were stowed, the exterior straps were in place, the cargo netting draped and secure.
    Hadley waited for me to finish up, then walked forwards with me. “I’m going to tell the AC you solved the problem,” he said, “and to get us back to speed.”
    I nodded.
    â€œOne more thing,” he said. “If you see that fly, kill it.”
    â€œDidn’t you...”
    â€œNo.”
    I didn’t know what else to say, so I said, “Yes, sir.”
    Pembry sat in her seat, nose wriggled up, feigning sleep. Hernandez sat upright, eyelids half open. He gestured for me to come closer, bend down.
    â€œDid you let them out to play?” he asked.
    I stood over him and said nothing. In my heart, I felt that same pang I did as a child, when summer was over.
    When we landed in Dover, a funeral detail in full dress offloaded every coffin, affording full funeral rights to each person. I’m told as more bodies flew in, the formality was scrapped and only a solitary Air Force chaplain met the planes. By week’s end I was back in Panama with a stomach full of turkey and cheap rum. Then it was off to the Marshall Islands, delivering supplies to the guided missile base there. In the Military Air Command, there is no shortage of cargo.

Delta Sly Honey
    LUCIUS SHEPARD
    Lucius Shepard’s short fiction has won the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award, the International Horror Guild Award, the National Magazine Award, the Locus Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, and the World Fantasy Award.
    Shepard’s most recent book is The Dragon Griaule , which brings together five previously published stories and one new short novel about a 6,000 foot dragon.
    Forthcoming is another short fiction collection, Five Autobiographies, and two novels, tentatively titled The Piercefields and The End of Life As We Know It.
    T here was this guy I knew at Noc Linh, worked the corpse detail, guy name of Randall J. Willingham, a skinny red-haired Southern boy with a plague of freckles and eyes blue as poker chips, and sometimes when he got high, he’d wander up to the operations bunker and start spouting all kinds of shit over the radio, telling about his hometown