Blood Magik- A Cold Day In Hell

by Corwyn Matthew

“Actually…that’s not bad.” Obie was beginning to see the brilliance in his friend’s inspired sense of humor. “But where the hell are we gonna find a fat chick?”

  “Or a dead dog?” Donny, as usual, wanted in on his partner-in-pranks’ latest scheme.

  “I’d be willing to put in the time and effort it’ll take to make this work.” Mac sounded so serious it was comical, and Carl just shook his head and chuckled while turning away from the fiasco.

  Comrie’s headless corpse finally decided to do something about its own woes and reached into the shallow grave. It got down on both knees and instinctively clutched its head with one hand, a fistful of cemetery soil with the other. It patted its own neck-hole with the dirt then rubbed the bottom of his severed head in the ground to soil-up its underside. By this time, the joke was slowly losing its appeal and everyone lost interest, except for Boner, who still hadn’t quite caught on and was wondering what the fallen Priest was planning to do. He watched while Comrie’s body hoisted his head over its shoulders and put it back in place, holding it steady as the cursed mud weaved together the veins, ligaments, and flesh of his neck to make him whole. Eventually, he let go of his head, turned it side to side, then hawked up a few ounces of muddy phlegm from his throat and spit it on top of his own grave.

  “You guys fucking blow. I hate you assholes.” He coughed up another dirt loogie then wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

  “HOUNDS!!” J.C. let out a roar to call his troops to attention. “…Priests…” He still wasn’t quite used to addressing the L.A. team as his own, but knew they’d all come together in the end. “Today is the first day of the end of the world. …We have work to do.”

  “Hey,” Comrie spoke up when he noticed something he thought might be worth mentioning. “Where’s Sally goin’?” his voice hoarse from the damage his throat had reaped.

  The dreaded Sally the Terrible had broken apart from the rest and started off on his own, marching away from his teammates toward the Spirit Fortress. He’d heard his calling in the elegant voice of their goddess and knew his path would lead him away from the rest for the time being. They would likely be united again, but for now he was needed elsewhere.

  Cayman turned toward Jean-Claude for directions. “Should I go after ’im?”

  J.C. gazed over the top of the rest and searched his instincts for a course of action. Inside, he knew Sally had his own path to follow.

  “No…” He looked over to Cayman with a confident glare. “Our queen calls to him. We will see him again.” He glimpsed down the line at his undead forces. “For now, we set a trap. The Queen shows me our future…and it is here Marty will be… And when he is…we will be ready to fuck him.”

  They all knew what he meant.

  “Can’t set a trap without bait.” Carl seemed to be on board and had an idea of his own. “A few of us should spread out, look for hostages. Specifically, that fine-ass, little sister of his. Or his girlfriend…” He looked around to make sure he had everyone’s ear. “…I know where they both live.”

  There was a quiet rumble of chuckles and sounds of the whole faction voicing their approval, and J.C. smiled with vicious intent.

  “Then we split… Priests will find Marty’s friends and bring them to me alive. Hounds; we set a perimeter aroun’ the cemetery…” then he added, “…after we eat.”

  “What the hell is there to grub on around here, anyway?” Zeus may be as thin as a twig, but his apatite was as mighty as his namesake. “The whole city looks like it’s been cleaned out for miles…” His voice boomed through the cavernous depths of his lengthy lungs, finding its way through the black forest of his beard.

  “There is life here for the taking closer than you think.” Jean-Claude knew about the demons herding human survivors on the other side of the cemetery. There wasn’t enough walking dead to eat or carry all the people they’ve rounded up from the city, so they found marching them in single-file lines to meet their own demise was more efficient than dragging corpses by the handfuls. “We will take what we want and eat like kings… But we may have to fight to get our prize.”

  They all grumbled lowly in anticipation of a little chaos and anarchy and, as if they had a single mind, half of them yelled out,

  “HOUNDS!!”

  And the other half followed with,

  “PRIESTS!!”

  Jean-Claude looked proudly over his men and firmly added his own catchphrase, announcing him as their top dog.

  “…Woof.”

  2

  Sally the Terribly Dreaded charged across the cemetery toward his calling with intentions hellbent on discovering his place in this world; goalie stick in hand, hockey helmet on full bluster. There wasn’t a thing in this graveyard that could stop him from meeting his queen, yet the smalltime demon cohorts assigned to stand guard around her fortress would try, nonetheless.

  A platoon of WWI soldiers in military uniforms stood fifty yards away, taking notice to Sally’s march. Where he was headed was evident, and other than their queen’s son and his father who would be arriving soon, they had orders to allow none to pass. Little did they know, Imala had purposely set them where they stood for Sally to maul his way through as a test his of strength. He would undoubtedly make short work of this demon pop quiz and be moving right along…contemptuously.

  “Just where’n the hell d’ya think yer goin’, hockey-man?” The first of the dozen zombie soldiers approached with an arrogantly lax disposition. His mud-incrusted wool service cap matching the time period of his olive colored shirt and trousers. “Queen said no vis—”

  His arrogance was short lived, however, and easily chopped down to size – about half his size, to be exact – when the blade of Sally’s stick sliced the soldier’s body clean through its middle.

  The soldier tried turning at his hips as Sally stormed passed but only assisted his torso in sliding off his pelvis to meet the ground. Afterward, his bottom half turned to clumps of black mud, but his top remained intact with his head still screwed on tight.

  From his spot in the dirt he called out to the men behind him: “Troops!”, then utilized his demonic self to deepen his tone when adding, “…Demoralize,” with a sneer.

  The remaining eleven lined up in a flash to begin their charge: two from the middle of the line first, the rest following a few steps behind in a triangular ambush. They were fast on their feet, but Sally was a young Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon.

  He swung his stick upward and across his body, slicing through the first two with one swipe and a blur of motion. He rushed to his right with the knob of his tool to punch a hole the size of a softball through the next soldier’s face, then swung his stick-blade shoulder-high to decapitate the dead-man charging from his left. The last seven infantrymen were close enough now to form a circle around their opponent and Sally smiled enthusiastically under his snarling mask.

  The first demon that reached for him lost both his arms to Sally’s blade in the blink of an eye. The next threw a punch that he caught and twisted in his grip before delivering a kick to the soldier’s torso hard enough to rip his body from his arm and fling him twenty feet from the crowd, the severed limb easily reverting to mud in his grasp.

  “You boys sure you wanna do this?” Sally figured he’d throw a lifeline out just in the name of good sportsmanship.

  The six soldiers that remained – one without any arms – all exchanged glances until one spoke up.

  “What’s the worst he can do? …Kill us?”

  They all chuckled at the thought of a death that wouldn’t last. Even if their bodies were turned to dust, they could always be reborn in another. And soon the world around them would be so close to their native Hell they wouldn’t even need human form to exist on Earth. They could just climb right back out of the Pit and rejoin the ranks as their demon selves.

  While getting situated for a final hail, the se
venth member of the remaining combatants rejoined his platoon, his right shoulder a gooey stump missing its limb.

  Three of them came at him at a time, but Sally was too fast to be threatened. He slashed his goalie stick around him like cutting through foliage in a forest, and dead severed limbs flew up with every swipe. His stick was undoubtedly infused with a nether influence since any other composite shaft would’ve splintered to pieces after the second or third swing, and a ruby, mystic trail followed the path of his blade while chunks of tainted mud flew at all angles. By the time the first of the severed limbs hit the ground they reverted to dirt, and the leftover soldiers who still stood tried their hand next, reaching with whatever body parts they had left to offer.

  Soon, the whole crowd of dead-men was nearly limbless – some missing both arms and a leg, others both legs and an arm. One soldier still stood on two feet but wouldn’t stay that way for long. Sally spun around and came down fast with his stick on the top of the grunt’s head and sliced him vertically down his middle. The moment after the blade hit the ground between the soldier’s feet, his body’s two halves crumbled into dirt from top to bottom like water pouring over a sand sculpture.

  One of the lingering, squirming torsos with a feisty mouth, cursed Sally for his disobedience, but was interrupted by his head being severed from his shoulders. The head escaped the body and disintegrated to muck before it got far. Sally noticed that when he severed Comrie’s head, his parts remained intact…but these things just turned to shit when decapitated. He figured it was because Comrie was made of flesh and bone, while these creatures were pure, tainted blood and earth.

  He was right. The humans not only still had their bones and meat under their skin, but their corrupted souls as well. These demon puppets were only shells of beings and not much more. They were stronger and more powerful than any human alive, but were no match for a person resurrected one-on-one.

  The rest of the limbless rejects stayed quiet after Sally finished off the last one to speak. They figured they couldn’t do anything to stop him so they may as well shut their face-holes and wait around until more of their kind showed up to rebury what was left of them. In the meantime, Sally’s attention focused back on the fortress and he continued his march toward the moat of blood, body parts and eyes surrounding the structure.

  Bordering along the outside of the moat stood a translucent wall that hung in the air with a mystic, ruby tint, nearly blending in with the blood-mists, and when Sally approached it, he understood it was a type of sorcerous barrier standing as a blockade. He reached his hand out to connect with its surface and it reacted like soupy liquid to his touch. He knew instinctively it wouldn’t stop his kind from entering, so he stepped into it, succumbing to whatever effects it might have…

  It rippled with energetic charges as he pushed through. The sensation was like strolling into a wall of electrified slime, and he could hear the crackling of kilowatts of energy snapping against his helmet. It took him fifteen strides to squeeze through to the other side, and when he emerged, staring down at the edge of the blood-moat, he realized his strength and speed seemed diminished somehow, magically drained into the barrier he’d left behind.

  He looked in both directions, a few hundred feet either way, and saw no sign of a convenient passage to the other side. If he had still carried his gusto, he could’ve easily leapt over the river of death surrounding the fortress. But without it, he’d have to brave the moat one step at a time and get passed whatever obstacles were fermenting within.

  Without even a second thought, he stepped into the mire of gore. He didn’t have a clue how deep it would get – the breadth of it close to a hundred feet – but after a few steps he was already in it up to his hips. Swimming in his chest-pads and hockey-pants wouldn’t be easy, he thought. Lucky for him, J.C. decided not to bury him with his leg-pads and gloves on.

  His journey continued through the liquid cruor, submerged to his neck in death, when an enormous boom that sounded like God stepping down from the heavens shook the surface of the swamp. Sally looked back, investigating the formidable sound only to witness the giant gorrorgorde, Messalum, touching down outside the energy blockade. He watched as the massive Hell’s creature opened its hands to allow Smoke to strut down from one palm while Kalon’s near-dead carcass rolled out of another.

  Smoke picked his father up and swung his body over his shoulder like a bloody sack of laundry.

  “Stay.”

  He ordered his gorrorgorde like a pet and strolled toward the barrier. The mysterious energy opened a path when it recognized his bloodline and he waltzed through with his father over his shoulder, dripping a trail of his still-human hemoglobin behind. As he approached the moat, broken torsos and severed body parts all surfaced in the gore-river and came together to form a crossway under Smoke’s every step.

  The floating parts held well beneath his heavy feet, fitting together nearly seamlessly at a second’s notice. When he reached the halfway point where Sally was still making his way across, he looked over to him and offered a sarcastic nod.

  “Nice night for a swim.”

  Sally scowled at Smoke’s pomposity as he laughed and passed him by, the body parts bridge disassembling behind him while he made his way to the opposite shore. Seconds later, the fortress doors parted and allowed the haughty young prince of the cemetery to enter, then sealed shut behind.

  Sally soldiered on through the sludge like a man on a mission, rejuvenated by Smoke’s insulting dismissal, and noticed a handful of floating eyes around him all gawking his way, watching him progress slow but steady. He wondered if his queen could see through them, tracking his battle with mortal frailty. But it wouldn’t be long before he realized not all the eyes were actually floating… Some were connected to the tips of tendrils that he hadn’t figured out to what they belonged. And after he stared long enough, intrusively inquiring as to why he was being spied, whatever creature they’d spawned from decided its position had been made, so it gave up its sly, predacious stalking for a prompt, offensive posture—

  Twelve eyes to his left, all with a similar purplish gleam, lifted from the surface to reveal the thin, octopus-like arms attached. Sally raised his stick from beneath the thick broth he stood in and cocked back to swing…but apparently the twelve staring eyes were just a diversion.

  Something abruptly clasped at his thigh from under the loch, so he reached down to grab hold but was still too weak to put up a fight. The thick tentacle claiming his leg – a coarse, leather-like tongue from the mouth of who-knew-what – yanked him from his feet and dragged him under the swamp presumably to meet an end. Through the sludge, he couldn’t see what he was up against, and without his strength, could do little else but wait to be swallowed by whatever it was that decided to make a late-night binge of his bones…

  A mere moment passed before he was pulled into the mouth of the monster – which he could only guess to what it might’ve looked like – and his first impression was that the soft tissue of its throat engulfing his body felt like being swallowed alive by an enormous vagina with razor sharp thorns protruding from the middles of hundreds of herpes sores. It might have disgusted him if he still had any human need for revulsion, but since he didn’t, he only wondered how long it would take him to hack his way out of its enormous uterus and be merrily on his way.

  He didn’t need to wait long.

  The tendrilled vagina-monster discovered quickly that what it tried to consume wasn’t actually an edible source of nourishment. It spit him back out the same way he came, and the slime-covered Sally vowed he’d have the beast’s ovaries wrapped around his neck on a string before he reentered the world outside Hell’s castle.

  But for now, he had bigger vagina-monsters to fry – or at least to attend to – so he turned his back on the beast’s twelve eyes and serpent tongue and continued on his way, hair heavy under his mask from the blood and mucus it drank, but no worse
for the wear.

  It’d only be a few more yards before he’d conquer the nuisance of the moat and move on to the castle’s entrance. He could sense her strength the closer he got and could smell the chemical scent of her magik, like chlorine with a copper twist. He wasn’t sure what it was she wanted from him, but he knew it would be a task worthy of his malfeasance.

  In the distance, Jean-Claude marched his undead league-mates past the fortress toward the northern-end of the cemetery. He looked over with sharp, hawk-like vision and spotted Sally climbing out of the blood-marsh, standing at the foot of the citadel, the number 67 a barbaric beacon on the back of his orange and black Hounds jersey.

  Underneath his bravado and pride, a flicker of jealously sparked a strange sensation in his chest… But then he thought of his future reunion with the Priests’ wily captain and remembered his true calling.

  Sally had his part to play, and so had he. Whose journey was more significant wasn’t important. Only the results would matter in the end, and the end was only the start of something he couldn’t yet fully fathom. Hell was coming soon, and both men were dead-set on being a part of it. Before the parts they played were finished, every man on Earth and creature screaming in the underworld would know the names Sally J. Thompson and Jean-Claude Le’Duprie. Of this he was sure… But perhaps his certainty was a virtue he shouldn’t take for granted.

  B-Movie Horror Flick 101

  “We’ll see how well you deadbeat, douche-stains hold up against superior fucking fire-power.”

  The Coach had seen enough, trailing the former Jean-Claude Le’Duprie to the cemetery an hour before, and went home with an inspired sense of obligation flaring like a rash. He may be next to useless outside the rink, but military-zombie-apocalypses could quite possibly be his unannounced calling in life. If it were possible for anyone to be ready for such a thing, (if such a thing were even possible and he hadn’t just finally fallen completely off the nut-tree, preparing for war against innocent civilians he may’ve only thought were people eating shit-bags from the darkest depths of damnation…) then the Coach would be one of the few men in L.A. who stood a decent shot of mounting a defense against the bastards and putting up something of a fight. He’d made his way through the abandoned streets back to his place not far from the Forum and shacked up in his garage taking power tools to his truck, turning a 2007 Chevy Dually into a handcrafted machine of war.